Kingdom of the Blazing Phoenix

by Julie C. Dao

  “There must be water somewhere underneath this maze,” Fu said as the wooden box and its dangerous contents vanished from sight. “It rose up and formed a pit.”

  “Let’s hope there aren’t many more,” Jade said wearily. This ordeal had tired her more than all her weeks of travel. “So many have died trying to find this rose. We passed a man who had killed his friends so he might enter and take it for his own. What is it all for? Is it worth it?”

  The ghost shrugged. “A treasure with those abilities could make a man rich.”

  “I don’t understand these people,” she fumed. “They want wealth and power at any cost to themselves or others. Hearts, lives, whatever it takes!”

  She led the way, testing the ground every few steps. She and Fu walked in silence, which suited her just fine. Every time she thought of that skeleton’s hand or of the traitor who had left his friends for dead, it made her want to kick a statue. Life had been as worthless to them as it was to her stepmother. These people seemed to be forever scrambling up the side of a sand dune, slipping and sliding, pushing others down so that they might rise higher. It disgusted her.

  But, she reflected, perhaps among them were people who had hoped to do some good. Perhaps they had been like her, employing drastic measures in the hope of helping others.

  Jade felt better after a short nap, washing the grime from her pants and cutting more tendrils for their trail. And later that afternoon, they discovered that the path split in two again.

  “Look,” Fu said, excited. “We’ve already gone that way . . . See your plant trail?”

  “All of these paths seem to circle and run into one another,” she said thoughtfully. “But we haven’t gone down that one yet.”

  They took the branch to the right, and each step convinced her that she had at last discovered the correct path. The statues appeared older and more weathered than the ones in the outer sections of the maze. She held her breath as they progressed, exhaling with a rush when a huge courtyard appeared, enclosed by stone horses on three sides. She and Fu cheered to see what lay in the center: a granite platform, from which a bright red rose grew out of a crack on the surface. There was a reverence and a beauty that was at odds with the cruel maze.

  Jade fell to her knees, feeling as though she might burst into tears. “Oh, Fu, here we are. I was beginning to think it didn’t exist.”

  “Go on, then!” Fu said heartily. “Take your relic and let us be free of this place.”

  She rose and stepped onto the platform. The blossom clearly grew through some sort of magic, without rain or soil to help it, and a sudden anxiety seized her at the idea of plucking the unearthly flower. But time was running out; even now, Kang might be coming through the maze.

  Jade gritted her teeth and took hold of the thorny stem, tugging it from the stone. It came away easily, settling into her hand like a sword in a warrior’s grip.

  All at once, a great rumbling sound roared from beneath her.

  Without warning, the crack in the platform widened as the two halves split apart, flinging Jade down a winding hole into the bowels of the desert.

  Jade landed on what felt like shrubs and branches, lying still with the air knocked from her lungs. The hole from which she had fallen felt as distant as a star in the sky. A pinprick of sunlight shone from where she had stood seconds ago on the platform. The light shimmered faintly through the treetops . . .

  Treetops?

  She sat bolt upright, relieved to see the rose clutched safely in her shaking hand. She had landed on a strange bush with black, pale-veined leaves that left a light, sticky sap on her skin. Above her, the thick, lush leaves of onyx-trunked trees whispered in a hot, damp wind.

  She had fallen into some sort of underground jungle.

  Jade moved her shoulders and arms slowly, checking for injuries, but the sticky bush and the sack on her back had protected her. She got to her feet, feeling springy soil beneath her boots. The air was so humid, it felt like breathing through a hot, wet cloth pressed over her face.

  “Where do you suppose we are?” Fu materialized beside her with his hands on his hips. He surveyed the area with an air of calm curiosity, as though sightseeing for pleasure.

  “Did you fall down, too?” Jade asked.

  “Certainly not,” he said, affronted. “I floated after you quite gracefully.”

  A low, ambient roar echoed from somewhere nearby, putting Jade on edge at once. The sound brought back memories of blades glinting in firelight, blood on wooden cards, Amah’s determination as she leapt at Xifeng, Kang’s sword embedded in the nursemaid’s side . . .

  Jade hugged the rose to her, smelling the powerful, sweet fragrance from its petals.

  Damp shrubbery surrounded them, all broken twigs and garish mushrooms and twisted trees. The only light came from pinpricks far above, and yet Jade saw it all clearly: leaves with sap like pungent blood, ferns rimmed with fine needles, worm-eaten branches that resembled withered human arms, and disturbing flowers like mouths screaming in pain. The moist breeze rustled the leaves again, adding to the roaring water. No birds or animals seemed to live here.

  Jade felt cold, despite the sickly warmth that made her tunic cling to her skin. “Why have we come here? Do you suppose it’s a trap for whoever steals the rose?” she asked, considering the flower, which appeared as fresh and immaculate as though it had just come from a garden. “Isn’t it supposed to burn?” The moment she spoke these words, the silky red petals burst into flames. She shrieked and nearly dropped it.

  “Careful!” Fu shouted. “Don’t set the place on fire.”

  “It heard me. Stop burning . . . please?” The flames disappeared at once, and Jade gripped the stem, excited. “Fu, this is the rose from the story of the phoenix and the storm. We’ll have heat and light whenever we need it, and pure water, too. And speaking of water, I think we’ll have to follow that sound,” she added reluctantly, nodding at the roar of the unseen current.

  She slipped the rose into her sack and led the way, hating the sight of the humid, oppressive jungle on instinct. The air smelled like a sordid version of the Great Forest, the pine-like scent edged with poison and soil tinged with a sweetness like rot. The vines and branches grew so thickly, she had to cut a path through them with her dagger. So absorbed was she in her task that the source of the rushing water shocked her when it appeared.

  A monstrous black river hurtled through the jungle, the water so wide, they could not see the opposite bank. The current tore through boulders and sliced into the damp soil at their feet, so vicious and angry that it seemed to boil as it passed by them.

  It was the type of river made to devour.

  A figure knelt by the screaming water, dabbling a hand in as though it were a calm summer stream. The man rose, his thin, frail silhouette too tall to be human.

  Every muscle in Jade’s body tensed as he turned toward them. She could not see his features; only two long, slender hands, each finger like a stark white bone. Dread poured over her like a bucket of melted snow; she felt it creeping down her neck, chilling her despite the heat.

  “Princess.” The whisper had to have come from the robed figure, but the sound echoed all around them as though the trees had spoken. “You are welcome here.”

  Cold sweat slid down Jade’s neck as she studied the man’s facelessness, his skinny hands, and the slow and sinuous way he moved, like a snake through slick grass. “I’ve waited a long time for what is rightfully mine,” he uttered, and this time his voice emanated from the river, the grass, the soil—everywhere except the place from which it should have come. “My patience has not been rewarded. But you will change that, Jade of the Great Forest.”

  He raised a bony hand toward the river, and a great curtain of water rose up from its depths. It faced Jade, swirling viciously, and she saw her own reflection in it as clearly as though it were a still pond or a mir
ror of tarnished bronze. Her mouth went dry.

  The Serpent God. Jade looked straight at Fu as she thought the words.

  The ghost’s eyes widened. “He can’t see me if I don’t wish him to,” he said in a low voice, “but he might sense my presence.”

  An air of stagnant decay blanketed the entire jungle, but it seemed strongest near this too-tall figure. Something flashed in the curtain of water, drawing Jade’s eye away from him: a regal woman appeared in the depths of the dark mirror, in that waterfall where no reflection should be. The woman turned, but instead of Xifeng, Jade saw her own face. She held a gold crown of blazing phoenix feathers arranged like the rays of the sun, which she placed upon her own head.

  “I chose wrong before,” the Serpent God went on in his harsh whisper. “I thought she would let me win her and be my queen, but she denies all I have given her. She uses my gifts for her own ends, instead of keeping her promise to obey me.”

  Fu called out sharply, “Princess!”

  Jade realized she had been taking step after step, moving closer to the mirror-water as though in a trance. She blinked, shaking off the feeling of dazed disorientation, and noticed for the first time that hard white objects were swirling in the river. After weeks in the desert, she recognized them at once: human bones.

  Skeletons torn into tormented slivers tossed in the briny black water. Clumps of hair still attached to pieces of human scalp clung hopelessly to boulders, and shreds of flesh and sinew and skulls with mouths gaping in eternal screams spiraled in the depths. The crowned woman in the mirror-water moved again, but Jade could not take her eyes from the bones in the flood.

  “Heed me, daughter of dragons,” the Serpent God commanded. “Watch your destiny take shape. You shall do my bidding as Empress and secure the throne of Feng Lu for me. You will give me armies and land, and in return, I will give you peace. I will give you what no one else can: the freedom to live in safety and seclusion, far from the dangers of the world.”

  The mirror-water changed to show the lush, gentle trees of the Great Forest, and between its branches, the monastery. Jade’s heart compressed with painful longing for the home she had shared with Amah and the women who had loved and raised her. She heard the monks chanting and the bells ringing, and could have wept for the yearning in her soul.

  “You never wanted power, I know,” the Serpent God murmured. “Reclaim the crown, and when Feng Lu is mine, I will let you hide away, safe and sound.”

  Jade could not deny that he spoke the deepest wish of her heart. And yet, and yet . . .

  Was it still her wish, now that her eyes had opened to the cruelties to which Feng Lu had been subjected? Children laboring, people rioting, soldiers dragging boys away as their mothers wept, women hanging dead-eyed from the gates of the city . . . Was Jade still so eager to hide in an impossible fantasy when, all around her, the legacy of her family crumbled to ashes?

  That’s what he wants, she thought with rising contempt. He and Xifeng are the same.

  They wanted power built on the backs of others and an empire fueled by blood.

  Unable to control Xifeng, to dominate her will entirely, he thought to try it with Jade—to install her on the throne as his puppet, and through her, to further destroy the continent. She saw in her mind a dark legion of snake soldiers, crawling over Feng Lu until it had strangled the life from its people. And then it would spread across the sea, finding a new continent to infest.

  It was a game of life and death, and her only option was to win. Otherwise her family’s legacy, Empress Lihua’s memory, and all of Feng Lu would come crashing down.

  Jade was the last of her clan, and her duty weighed upon her like a cloak of iron.

  I choose to win, she thought fiercely.

  Because the Serpent God was still watching, she said shakily, “You would give me sanctuary? Peace and quiet, and the freedom to live my life as I choose it?”

  “I swear it.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Jade saw Fu floating along the riverbank toward a cage of human bones. A turtle the size of a rowboat lay inside, so motionless that she thought it was dead until its dull eyes moved to hers. The defeat and despair in its glance moved her heart to pity. It didn’t belong in this dark jungle any more than she herself did.

  Slowly, with purpose, the turtle shifted its eyes from hers to a spot in the black river. She followed its gaze and for the first time, she saw a soft glow within the churning depths, so unlike the tortured bones that it seized her focus at once. Everything that had once belonged to a human was tossed about by the waves, but the glowing object remained perfectly still.

  It was the second relic, the fishbone of Kamatsu. Jade realized that was why it had been stitched near the rose on Amah’s map; all this time, it had been miles below it.

  Her chest tightened as she met Fu’s eyes. I have to retrieve the relic without the Serpent God knowing, she thought, and the ghost’s eyes narrowed in understanding and he vanished.

  “A peaceful existence is what I would wish,” Jade told the Serpent God, knowing he was still watching. She gazed back at the mirror, but her feet were moving slowly toward the water.

  The fallen deity’s voice became coaxing, intimate. “You will be obedient where the other has not. You will raise armies and bring Feng Lu crashing to its knees before me.”

  Jade continued inching toward the river’s edge, making a show of contemplating the mirror as she did so. She slipped her bags from her shoulders and knelt dreamily on the sharp rocks as though compelled. “But you are all-powerful,” she said. “Why should a heavenly lord need a weak human like me? I have nothing compared with your strength and knowledge.”

  “Gods have been absent from the earth for ages,” the Serpent God answered. “It is simpler for humans to accept and rally under one of their own, and safer for me to stay here, hidden away, until you have ensured my invincibility. Only then will I step forth.”

  Jade felt another rush of disdain. Once she had done the work and secured the continent, he would come out and take the credit. She wondered why Xifeng had never realized that, never understood that the Serpent God needed her more than she needed him.

  She had, Jade realized. But she figured it out too late.

  “Feeble human minds must grow used to the idea of one supreme deity,” the Serpent God went on. “Won’t it be ironic when I seize Feng Lu with an heir whose claim to it is irrefutable? An heir whose veins carry the blood of the Dragon King, the upstart who sought to exile me?”

  Jade reached for the thorny rose, her eyes on the bilious river. She didn’t know if the flower would purify the water long enough for her to get the fishbone, but she had no choice.

  Fu, where are you? she thought desperately. Are you listening?

  “You’re not paying attention, child,” the Serpent God said, and Jade gave a start. “Don’t you want to go home to the monastery, far from the reach of the world?”

  A ghostly whisper in her ear: “I will hold him for you.”

  How? Jade thought, but there was a ferocity in Fu’s tone that she had not heard before . . . and a deep undercurrent of human emotion.

  “Go!” Fu roared.

  Jade sprang into action. “Burn!” she cried, and the rose burst into flames.

  Behind her, Fu materialized. Where he had been transparent before, now he became solid, furious, and corporeal as he ran at the hooded figure of the Serpent God.

  “You cannot survive long in that water, girl!” the fallen god shrieked, his words pulsing with fury as he raged and pushed. But Fu had somehow created a wall around the deity so that he could not get to Jade. For all of his boasting about power and supremacy, the Serpent God could not fight the defiant spirit. “It will be like poison seeping into your lungs!”

  “Hurry, Jade!” Fu shouted, his outline flickering.

  Jade stood on the edge of the
riverbank, clutching the burning rose. A sickly odor rose off the surface of the water, like meat rotting in the sun.

  Mother, Amah, gods above, she thought. Give me strength.

  And then she dove.

  The water was freezing when Jade plunged in, but the rose continued to burn, casting a circle of golden light as it warmed the river. She struggled against the powerful current, past grisly human remains, but the light of the rose protected her from the whirling thigh bones and skulls. The river almost felt clean, though it was so littered that she knew the flower shielded her from the truth. She kicked off against a boulder with all of her strength.

  The fishbone floated in the center of the river, a star stuck in a roiling black sky. Jade swam desperately toward it, fighting as hard as she could against the current. She was forced to come up for air, but wasted no time before plunging back down, pushing against boulder after boulder until the treasure of Kamatsu was within reach.

  She reached out, preparing to resurface in triumph, but her hand went through the relic. She tried again, but could not touch it. Panic rose in her throat. Time was running out; perhaps Fu had lost his hold on the Serpent God already. Why could she not claim it? She had easily taken the cloak and the rose . . . She had only to keep a promise and survive a desert maze . . .

  The story.

  In the tale, the maiden’s mother had told her how to use the fishbone: to first recite the poem that would make her wishes come true.

  Bones of my mother

  Spirit in a fish

  Bestow on me your kindness

  And grant me my heart’s wish.

  The moment she opened her mouth to speak the verse, Jade’s chest tightened, her lungs screaming for air. She kicked up to the surface and gasped for air, hearing the Serpent God and Fu roaring furiously at each other, but she had no time. She murmured the poem to herself above the water, praying it would work before sinking again into the black river. This time, her fingers plucked the fishbone and she kicked off for the surface.