The Veiled Dragon

by Denning, Troy

  A feeling of nausea crept over Ruha. “The thief is … he is not living. He is one of the undead.”

  An expression of pity passed over Hsieh’s face, and he folded down his second finger. “Final question. Who is kidnapper?”

  This was the question Ruha had been dreading. She had omitted any mention of Cypress’s identity, fearing that the mandarin would decide it was safer for Lady Feng to cooperate with the dragon than to help Vaerana save Yanseldara. Nevertheless, the witch had no choice except to hope she could persuade Hsieh to ally with her, for it was growing clearer all the time that she did not understand enough about Lady Feng’s magic to save Yanseldara.

  “Who take Lady Feng?” Hsieh demanded.

  Ruha swallowed, then said, “The same barbarian who tried to assassinate you.”

  Hsieh frowned at her. “No one tries to kill me.”

  Ruha nodded. “On the Ginger Lady. The dragon.”

  “You are greatly mistaken.” Hsieh’s rebuke was both confident and gentle. “Dragon is after gold and jewels—”

  “And you,” Ruha replied. “His name is Cypress, and he is the leader of the Cult of the Dragon. He fears you have come to replace Tang and stop the palace’s trade in poisons, and so he tried to kill you.”

  “That is most impossible.” Hsieh shook his head stubbornly. “I send messenger with word of my visit only one day before dragon attack. Because I travel with only light bodyguard, I instruct Prince and Princess to tell no one of my journey—unless they tell Lady Feng?”

  Ruha shook her head. “I overheard them say Lady Feng was abducted before your message arrived.”

  “Then dragon cannot know I am coming. Who tell him?”

  That was when Yu Po appeared at the door. “Esteemed Minister, I beg permission to report.”

  Hsieh frowned and started to hold him off, but Ruha, who needed time to think, said, “Yu Po is not interrupting. Let him speak.”

  Hsieh nodded to his adjutant, who quickly picked his way across the debris and bowed. “Princess Wei Dao is most comfortable in her apartment,” Yu Po reported. “As I was inspecting her chambers to be certain of her safety, I find this.”

  The adjutant opened his hand, revealing the exotic Calimshan gold that Tombor had put into Ruha’s coffer to impress Wei Dao.

  Hsieh studied the coin, then scowled at his adjutant. “Wei Dao is Princess, Yu Po. Do you expect to find no gold in her chamber?”

  “Not gold like this.”

  Yu Po pinched the edges of the coin with both hands and pulled. The coin came apart, revealing a tiny compartment where a small paper message might be concealed.

  Hsieh took the two halves from his adjutant. “Most ingenious. Do you find what is inside?”

  “No,” Yu Po admitted.

  “But I know who sent it to her,” Ruha said. “And if I am correct, Esteemed Mandarin, I also know who told Cypress you were aboard the Ginger Lady.”

  “Wei Dao?” Hsieh asked.

  “That coin was given to me by someone who promised it would win the princess’s hospitality,” Ruha said. “It did.”

  “How come Yu Po finds it in her chamber?”

  “I saw her sneak it from my gold coffer. The person who gave it to me said the princess had a fondness for foreign coins,” Ruha explained. “Now I think it contained a message from a spy in Moonstorm House, warning Wei Dao of my identity. The princess has been most insistent about wishing to kill me—regardless of Prince Tang’s commands to the contrary.”

  Hsieh pushed the two halves of the coin together and folded it into his palm, then waved the witch toward the door. “It seems our mutual problem is solved, does it not, Lady Ruha?”

  Ruha did not move. “No. How could it be?”

  “If dragon kidnaps Lady Feng, then kidnapper is no threat.”

  The witch was confused by the mandarin’s misunderstanding—until she recalled that Hsieh had seen her destroy Cypress on the Dragonmere. She had said nothing about the dragon taking another body, and Ruha certainly saw no reason to broach the subject now.

  “Do you not understand, Lady Ruha?” Hsieh asked. “We have only to locate dragon’s lair; then we find both Lady Feng and Yanseldara’s stolen staff.”

  “Of course!” Ruha did her best to sound astonished. “And if you will me tell more about these ylang blossoms, perhaps I know someone who can be tricked into leading us to the lair.”

  Eleven

  Tang’s punt came to another fork in the slough. His boatpushers jammed their poles into the black water, the butts angled forward to halt the little dugout while he guessed at the way to Cypress’s lair. Behind him arose a gentle sloshing as his men struggled to stop their heavy log rafts. Save for the unremitting hum of mosquitos, no other sound broke the silence of the swamp. The evening light lay upon the glassy waters as sinuous and wispy as smoke, yielding no hint of the sun’s location. Along the banks of the channels rose tangled webs of prop roots, supporting thickets of vine-choked bog cane as impenetrable to the eye as walls of stone. Even the sky itself was hidden from view, concealed behind a murky canopy of moss-draped boughs.

  Somewhere nearby loomed the Giant’s Run Mountains, a chain of high peaks lying half a day’s canter southeast of the Ginger Palace, but Tang could not find the way to their steep slopes. Though he had commanded his men to remain confident, he could feel their trust ebbing with every minute he remained lost, and even he was losing faith in his abilities. The swamp was so small that it had no name—indeed, few outside the Cult of the Dragon knew it existed at all—and twice the prince had come to Lair here with fellow cult members. It seemed impossible that its meager maze of waterways should disorient him or anyone else, yet Tang had been trying to locate Cypress’s hole for more than two hours.

  The punt rocked beneath the prince’s feet. He glanced back to see the commander of the palace garrison, General Fui D’hang, stepping into the dugout from a wagon-sized raft of lashed logs. A squat, flat-cheeked man with an unwavering scowl and granite eyes, he wore a helmet of silver-trimmed brass and an oversized battle tunic over leather armor. Most of the men behind him were dressed in a similar manner, save their helmets were steel with brass trim.

  The general bowed. “May it please the Prince to hear me.”

  As with all Fui said, the statement was a command, not a request. Prince Tang nodded, but looked away to emphasize that he would not allow the general to bully him.

  “Night falls soon, and men are uneasy at being lost—”

  “Do I say we are lost?” Tang whirled on the general so fast that, had his boatpushers not had their poles planted on the bottom, the punt would have capsized. “We are not lost. Dragon uses Invisible Art to confuse honorable soldiers. They may eat another lasal leaf.”

  Fui did not turn to issue the command. “Since you are not lost, perhaps you guide us to dry land. It is better to camp outside swamp.”

  “No. We must rescue Lady Feng tonight.”

  The general’s eyes remained stony. “If we perish in dark—”

  “Tonight.”

  Fui’s lips tightened. “Surely, Wise Prince knows it is inauspicious to attack eminent dragon at all, but to attack at night …”

  “This dragon is different!” snapped Tang. “Cypress does not have favor of Celestial Bureaucracy!”

  “Perhaps Wise Prince explains why it takes so long to reach dragon’s palace?” Fui insisted. “This swamp is size of peasant village. By now, we should find dragon’s home through tenacity alone.”

  “It is question of patience, not ‘finding!’ ” Prince Tang turned away from General Fui, silently cursing the absence of a wu-jen. A little magic would go far toward helping him find his goal. “Tell men to be ready. Not far now!”

  Selecting a direction at random, the prince pointed down the fork on the right. General Fui barely had time to leap back to his own raft before Tang’s boatpushers guided the punt into the channel. As they traveled down the curving slough, the mosquito hum became a maddenin
g drone. Though the Shou berry juice the prince had rubbed into his flesh protected him from bites, clouds of the insects dragged across his skin like chiffon.

  Tang began to sense an enormous, dark presence ahead. The canopy arched higher above the water, and the swamp grew steadily murkier and more forlorn. The beards of moss vanished from the branches alongside the passage, replaced by the curtainlike webs of brilliantly striped spiders with abdomens as large as a man’s fist. Ahead of the punt, dark chevrons appeared in the water as startled snakes swam for cover. The ends of submerged logs sprouted eyes and watched the flotilla pass. A half-remembered murmur echoed through the trees from somewhere ahead: the purl of water trickling down some steep slope.

  Tang felt butterflies fluttering in his stomach and beads of sweat sliding down his brow. He withdrew a handful of lasal leaves from a basket in the bottom of the dugout and distributed them among his boatpushers, then placed two into his own mouth and chewed. As the protective fog arose inside his head, he began to regard the impending battle with increasing giddiness. Soon, he would have vengeance on his enemy. After his men destroyed Cypress’s new body, he himself would find and smash the spirit gem. Then, when Yen-Wang-Yeh’s servants came to drag Cypress’s wayward spirit down to the Ten Courts of the Afterlife, Tang would recount all the dragon’s crimes against himself and Shou Lung, thus insuring a stern verdict that would condemn his foe to ten thousand centuries of torment in the Eighteenth Hell.

  The rancid stench of rotting fish began to waft through the air. The channel widened into a broad basin of black water strewn with mats of bog scum and studded by the naked gray trunks of a bald cypress stand. On the far side of the pool, a steep, green-blanketed scarp rose abruptly from the murky water and disappeared above the swamp’s gloomy canopy. Down the face of this slope snaked a tiny ribbon of silver water, the same small brook casting its purl throughout the slough. To the left of the stream, barely visible through the whirling clouds of mosquitos, was a huge, half-submerged grotto, the moss curtain that dangled over its mouth tattered and frayed by the constant passage of some huge body.

  Tang ordered his boatpushers to stop. Though the area had been darker and more crowded on the two occasions the prince had visited it before, he recognized it instantly. Just outside the cavern lay a toppled cypress where the dragon roosted during Lair, with the entire cult arrayed before him upon the same rafts now occupied by General Fui and his men. Rising from the waters around the perch were heaps of large fish skeletons, some with bits of gray, gritty hide still clinging to the thick bones, and hanging in the limbs of nearby trees were hundreds of long-toothed jaws.

  Tang was most distressed to see that Cypress had already devoured so many sharks. From what the prince had learned during his brief association with the cult, when a dracolich’s body was destroyed, he lost the ability to speak, cast magic spells, and use his terrible breath weapon. Unfortunately, he could regain those capabilities by consuming a mere tenth of his previous body, which he could always locate via a strange mystical bond—even if the corpse had been burned, shredded, or eaten. Judging by the number of skeletons lying in the water, Cypress could not be far from a full recovery.

  General Fui’s raft pulled alongside the punt, and Tang pointed at the cavern. “That is dragon’s palace.” The prince allowed himself the pleasure of a touch of sarcasm at the term ‘palace.’ “Men are ready?”

  The general glanced at the four rafts behind his, each bearing fifteen anxious warriors, and flashed a hand signal. A gentle clatter rustled over the pond as his men reached for their halberds and pushed lasal leaves into their mouths. Fui watched a moment, then slipped a leaf between his own lips and nodded.

  Tang drew his sword, then looked back to the cave and waited for General Fui to lead the soldiers forward. Thanks to his lasal-induced daze, the prince realized he could actually see the murk gathering over the swamp. It looked like a thick, oily smoke seeping from the fetid depths of Cypress’s lair, where the dragon rested upon his bed of gold, dreaming of Yanseldara and filling the air with the dank gloom of his wicked obsession.

  The prince’s thoughts turned to his mother, and he found himself wondering what effect the unnatural murk would have on her. If the fumes darkened her fair skin, she would never forgive—most cursed lasal! That was the trouble with it; the user found it difficult to keep his mind focused on the task at hand, and he sometimes found his head filled with ridiculous ideas.

  Noting that Fui still had not given the order to advance, Prince Tang looked to his general. “Why do you wait?” He waved his sword at the cavern. “Go kill dragon!”

  Fui’s head slowly turned toward Tang’s punt. The general’s pupils were nearly as large as his irises, and a blank, almost muddled expression had fallen over his normally resolute face.

  “You do not lead us into cavern, Brave Prince?”

  “Me?” Tang looked at the sword in his hand and understood the reason for the general’s confusion. “I cannot lead way into danger. I am Prince!”

  “That is what I try to say in Ginger Palace.” Under the lasal’s influence, Fui spoke more freely than he would have otherwise. “Do I not suggest it is foolish for you to take field? Do I not hint that your inadequate preparations oblige men to take extra risks to protect you?”

  The lasal haze inside Tang’s mind began to darken and churn. “I am Prince! Soldiers die at my will!”

  “True, but Honorable Prince does not waste their lives!” the general spat. “If you desire Lady Feng’s rescue, you must stand aside and let someone who knows—”

  A chorus of snickers filled the air behind Fui. The general stopped speaking in midsentence, and his widening eyes betrayed his astonishment at the words coming from his mouth. He dropped to his knees and kowtowed on the raft, pressing his forehead down so close to the edge that his silver-trimmed helmet fell off and slipped beneath the inky waters.

  “Mighty Prince, I do not know these words! They are not my own!”

  Tang hardly heard the apology. The lasal clouds inside his mind had worked themselves into a storm, and he could think of nothing but his fury.

  “Words belong to him who speaks them.” Tang glanced at the rafts behind Fui, where more than seventy soldiers were studying the swamp’s gloomy canopy and biting their cheeks to keep from laughing. Bolts of lightning began to flash inside the prince’s head. “Lasal loosens tongue. It cannot change secret thoughts of any man.”

  “Merciful Prince, I command garrison of Ginger Palace since it is built, and before that I humbly serve in personal guard of Lady Feng. Please to allow me honor of dying in battle.” Fui lifted his head and dared to meet Tang’s eyes. “Let me lead soldiers into dragon’s palace.”

  “I myself lead way into lair.” Tang glared at his general until the last soldier no longer found it necessary to bite his cheeks; then he pronounced Fui’s sentence: “Shou general must respect master with heart as well as tongue, so that he does not forget himself and make men laugh at Worthy Prince. To fail in this is treason.”

  Fui’s face went as stiff as a mask. He whispered a prayer, beseeching his ancestors to find a place for him in the Celestial Bureaucracy, then touched his brow to the log. “I am ready.”

  Tang looked past Fui to Yuan Ti, the moon-faced commander of the sentries who protected his lizard park. Since the young officer had already faced the dragon and lived, General Fui had selected him as second in command for this mission.

  Yuan swallowed and reached for his sword, but his hand began to tremble, and he did not draw the weapon. The youth clenched his teeth as though fighting a wave of nausea, and tears welled in his eyes.

  Tang scowled at the hesitation. “Why do you delay? Punish General Fui’s insolence!”

  Yuan managed to pull his sword halfway from its sheath, then turned away sobbing. The youth’s profile accentuated his flat cheeks, and it was then Tang realized the boy’s identity. The fury faded from the lasal-induced storm inside the prince’s head, and the tempes
t became instead a drizzle that clouded his thoughts with cold, sick regret. It was not uncommon for Shou generals to make places for their sons in their own commands, but how was Tang to know the youth’s identity? A Shou prince did not trouble himself with the domestic lives of his inferiors. He could hardly be expected to know every son that his officers brought to the Ginger Palace.

  Tang allowed General Fui’s boy to weep, grateful for a few moments to struggle with this new dilemma. As much as he disliked the idea of ordering a son to slay his own father, he could hardly retract the command now. The men had already come close to treason when they laughed at him earlier; to tolerate any further insubordination would only convince them that he was a weak and inept leader. Yuan would have to obey the command. If there was another way to solve the problem, the prince could not see it through the lasal haze.

  In a gentle but loud voice, Tang said, “You are a Shou soldier. You must do as I order.”

  The youth choked back his sobs and turned to face Tang. “Merciful Prince, the lasal leaves—”

  General Fui raised his head. “Silence, Yuan!” His voice had assumed the hard edge of command. “Do not dishonor our ancestors by arguing with your Prince!”

  The general pressed his brow to the logs again. The thought flashed through Tang’s mind that there must be a way to show mercy without showing weakness, but it was chased into the lasal haze by a great cry from Yuan’s mouth. In a motion too fast to see, the youth unsheathed his sword and brought the blade down on his father’s neck. There was a wet crack, and Fui’s head toppled off the raft into the swamp. The general’s body shuddered once, then went limp and slipped out of its kowtow, slowly stretching forward to push its headless shoulders into the dark pool.

  Fui’s head rolled in the water, bringing his granite eyes around to stare vacantly upward. Tang’s stomach began to feel queasy, but he clenched his teeth against the feeling and forced himself not to look away. The whole point of the punishment had been to show his soldiers that he was a strong leader, and he would not accomplish that by allowing the gaze of a dead man to intimidate him.