Along with the rest of us … The knowledge reminded Jia that not all Remnants shared the same abilities, the same intelligence. The jueyuan was simply an ape, or something resembling an ape, yet another inexplicable creation of the long-departed Xian, a creature that, for all his rarity, human beings would only see as a monster, a horror, a threat. One they might cage and cajole, beating him into submission …
“Where did they find you?” Jia muttered under her breath, pushing down an unbidden surge of sympathy. “Where?”
As if in answer, the jueyuan bellowed, thumping his chest. The beast, having broken through the gates, was bringing his fury to the battle. Everywhere she looked, she saw rebels swept aside by a hairy blue arm the size and weight of a tree trunk, the men tumbling across the flagstones in a snarl of turbans, curses and dropped knives. The great ape snatched a monk up off the ground, his struggling body dangling upside down, his legs trapped between thick leathery fingers. Roaring, the beast swung the monk downward. Jia squeezed her eyes shut at the wet crack of bone, the sight of brains painting the flagstones …
When she opened her eyes, the monks were fleeing, heading off in a confused mass towards the forest of pagodas in search of a decent hiding place, escaping the monster in the courtyard. Dazed, bloody, the remaining rebels climbed to their feet and gave chase, knives out and flashing.
That left Jia, Von Hart and the jueyuan. The beast bunched his haunches, preparing to leap after the battle, crash through the rows of tombs. Then he paused, grunting, something catching his attention. Jia cried out as his massive head came swinging towards her. He growled, baring his fangs—but his menace couldn’t hide the confusion in his eyes. She watched, holding her breath, as the beast scratched his armpit and reared up on his hind legs, his nostrils flaring. Smelling her.
Had the jueyuan caught her magical essence? Von Hart’s alien nature? Yes, she thought so. Sweat and dust aside, the ape’s eyes grew wider, the gleam of longing sliding under the surface, savage and raw. He blew out his cheeks, a gust that sent leaves rattling across the courtyard. There was more here than the scent of humans alone, and the beast was obviously trying to fathom it, this new and unexpected threat. To fathom her. He tipped his head, questioning.
Tentatively, Jia raised a hand in greeting, her palm held out and open. Stealing a breath, she took a small step forward.
Von Hart gripped her shoulder, a silent warning, but she shrugged him off, addressing the creature in the courtyard.
“That’s right, old one. I am like you.”
The jueyuan grumbled in his chest. Then he whined and hooted. If he decided to attack, no barrier stood between them; he could bound across the space with ease and rip her limb from limb. Jia’s heart punched against her ribcage as she watched the jueyuan’s eyes, bright, wary, hounded. Scars criss-crossed his snout and there were several patches in his dull blue pelt, making her wonder what kind of indignities he’d suffered, captured and caged by the rebels. What were his wounds if not a mirror to her own?
Another step. She stretched out her hand. Maybe if she could reach him, soothe him, she could—
The jueyuan threw back his head in a howl. He pounded his chest with his mallet-like fists, the canopy shaking overhead, twigs and leaves showering the courtyard, dust drizzling from the temple eaves. Echoes rebounded through the forest, bouncing between the mangrove trees, hissing through the bamboo. The battle, playing out between the tombs, faded into a background roar.
Von Hart gripped Jia’s shoulder again, this time less gently. He had seen enough.
“So much for diplomacy. Come on. We can shelter in the temple.”
Jia spared the ape a last frustrated glance and then the envoy was dragging her over the flagstones. The ground under her rumbled and shook as the beast brought his fists down, chips of stone flying as he levered his bulk after them. Von Hart, all decorum, held out his robe from his waist, his bare legs whirling like snow towards the temple steps. With a savage grunting in her ears, hot breath on the back of her neck, Jia leapt up the shallow incline. She sailed over the twisted roots and the cracked slabs to find the double doors locked and bolted. The chain rattled against old wood as she hurled her weight against it, then threw a desperate look at the envoy, who was racing up the steps behind her.
A roar shook the temple eaves, grit and leaves showering down. A yawn of fangs took up the space at the bottom of the steps, the foul blast of the ape’s breath speeding Von Hart up to the doors. He fumbled in his pocket, retrieving a large rusty key. Before he could protest, Jia snatched it from him, spinning on her heel to shove the key into the lock, turning it with a screech of metal. The moment the door swung wide, she grabbed the envoy and pulled him into the gloom beyond, whirling to shove her back against wood, the entrance slamming shut.
Boom!
The next thing she knew, she was tumbling through the air, hurled by the force of the jueyuan ramming the temple. Blocks of marble rumbled from the eaves, statues of dragons and monkeys shattering on the terrace, the pillars crumpling, a section of the roof sagging inward. Splinters flew, the lock and chain reduced to scrap metal, daylight spearing through the entrance. Dust billowed everywhere.
Shielding her head, coughing, Jia looked up from the broken benches and the overturned braziers among which she found herself sprawled. A shadow fell over her, the great blue ape ducking under the archway to crawl into the temple. He sniffed, then sneezed, a halo of dust leaping off his pelt. Through the murk, Jia made out Von Hart lying on his back a few feet away, his eyes wide and dark, his robe splayed around him like a pool of blood. As carefully as she could, Jia caught his gaze and pressed a finger to her lips.
Don’t move.
The ape, grunting, rolled on his knuckles right past them. Reaching the middle of the floor, he drew to a halt, surveying the altar. For the longest time, there was silence. In the distance, the noise of the battle went on, fading down the mountainside. Then the jueyuan gave another hoot, his excitement echoing across the floor, stirring the dust into fresh clouds. The afternoon breeze hushed through the forest, a sigh to match the one coming from the jueyuan, an exhalation of longing that prompted a gasp from Jia as she realised that the ape had laid eyes on the Eight Hand Mirror.
A mixture of jealousy and fear kicked her back onto her feet. She chanced a step forward, then froze when the jueyuan didn’t turn around, having lost interest in her and the battle outside. Following his gaze to the Eight Hand Mirror—her mirror (she thought of it as such)—her stomach clenched and her throat grew tight. She hadn’t thought about the magic in the glass answering to anyone other than her, but the black surface was rippling and clearing, opening up on a deep dark space.
The Eight Hand Mirror answers the desire of the one who stands before it.
She remembered Von Hart’s words well. For all its origins, the Eight Hand Mirror was merely a tool, ancient, magical and yet belonging to no one, not truly. Perhaps not even Von Hart. Held by the octagonal frame, a deep cave swirled into view, a different cave to the one where her parents, Ziyou and Ye, slumbered upon the underground shore. This one was smaller, with dead foliage piled up to the walls, the dry branches forming some kind of nest. In the nest, Jia made out several huddled shapes, the hint of limbs, long and strong, the rise and fall of simian chests. The mounds of sleek blue fur …
The jueyuan howled again. Then, warbling in his throat, fists and feet pounding the floorboards, the great ape forgot all about the rebels and the monks and Jia and the envoy and headed for the Eight Hand Mirror. For his troop. His tribe.
“No!”
Jia’s cry was futile, falling on deaf ears. The beast bounded up the steps to the altar, his arms flung wide in embrace.
Jia winced. There was a sound like the striking of a gong, the reverb shaking rubble from the beams overhead. Teeth rattling, she saw the beast smack into the mirror, the glass meeting his hairy bulk without so much as a shudder.
Dazed from the impact, swaying, the jueyuan recovere
d his footing and tried a more cautious approach. Snout extending, nostrils flaring, he sniffed the artefact, the large wooden frame, plain and unadorned. Then he lumbered around it, scratching his head as he surveyed the back of the relic, clearly unable to fathom the paradoxical dimensions, the yawning cavern in the glass and the shallowness of the frame. In silence, he came around to the front again, drawing himself up to his full height, his sloping brow level with the top of the frame. Without warning, he reached out and grabbed the mirror, giving it a rough shake.
Jia made to dart forward, but Von Hart’s hand was gripping her arm, advising restraint. Her head swung around, startled, fierce. She hadn’t heard her master approach. The envoy met her desperate gaze with a small shake of his head, and biting her lip, she could only watch as the ape set the mirror down with a grunt and a thump. When the dust cleared, she let out her breath, seeing that the glass was unbroken.
It is said that when one looks through the glass and sees the bitterest truth … Wasn’t that what the fairy had said, all those years ago in Xanadu? … on that day, the mirror will break.
Jia had no idea what that meant, but relief blossomed in her breast all the same. Of course the big blue monkey couldn’t break the glass! No more than he could step into the frame, shake the other apes awake, dispel the binding enchantment. Hadn’t Von Hart taught her the truth of the matter? The troop of jueyuan was no more present in the temple than her parents had been, Ziyou and Ye slumbering on under the northern plains. The Eight Hand Mirror was merely a window, a magical lens from a distant age, and it was no great mystery that the ape should share her desire, her private longing. Abandonment, loneliness, loss—these were the ghosts of all Remnants, weren’t they? Haunting them down the long years …
The Eight Hand Mirror stood firm on the altar, as solid, as strange as ever.
But her relief withered and died as she realised that the ape wasn’t going to leave the matter there.
Slowly the jueyuan lifted his arms and brought them down, pounding his fists against the glass. Dust trickled from the beams, and under Jia’s feet, the floorboards shook in time with the beast’s hammering, sorrow and pain punching into her bones. Wide-eyed, a hand climbing to her mouth, she watched as the ape pummelled the cold black glass. The echoes, metallic, dull, reverberated through the chamber, plucking at her nerve endings, setting her teeth on edge. Minutes passed as she stood there, frozen by an anguished uncertainty, her hands slipping around her face to cover her ears. It was only as the beast’s pounding gradually slowed, his bulk slumping, his breaths ragged, that she saw the blood streaking the mirror.
Clutching her head, she spun to Von Hart.
“Make it stop! Make it stop!”
And the envoy, perhaps waiting, perhaps not, obliged her.
An inexplicable blast of wind came up, his robes fluttering around him, livid tatters of red. Eyes bright, lips dancing with some charm or other, the fairy spread his arms, a fiery radiance, liquid and hot, balling around his outstretched fingers. With a cry of released chi, he brought his hands together, flinging the collected burst of energy at the jueyuan.
At the mirror. Gods … !
Prismatic light bleached the temple, devouring every shadow. Jia shielded her eyes as the colourful glare flooded outwards from the altar steps, a rippling, shimmering wake prickling on the inside of her skull. The blast shook hangings off the walls and widened the cracks in the floor. Mount Song itself rumbled for a moment, before falling still. When she opened her eyes, she witnessed the spindly form of Master Von Hart, a foggy aura, a rainbow seen through mist, fading all around him. She thought she heard a howl—the jueyuan?—but she couldn’t be sure in the rumbling chamber. As she counted her heartbeats, the echoes receded, falling away, leaving only silence.
Hardly daring to peep through her fingers, Jia looked up at the Eight Hand Mirror. It was only then, in that breathless moment, that she grasped the strength of the magic, the artefact unscarred, a smooth black octagon absorbing her alarm.
The glass unbroken.
The ape was gone. Jia didn’t ask where, thankful that she didn’t have to look at his charred dead body strewn across the altar. Perhaps he was ash, a pile of dust lost in all the rest. It was impossible to tell in the gloom. She choked back unease and, drawn by the mystery, made her way across the chamber and up the altar steps. Shivering, she stood before the frame, her flesh growing cold at her approach, numbed by the glass. Frowning, she stared harder into the darkness. Through frosty plumes of breath, she thought she could make out the shapes in there, equine, recumbent, green-maned and golden-hooved …
Overcome, she sank to her knees in the dust.
Von Hart, however, had no words of comfort.
“This shouldn’t have happened,” he said. “Matters must be worse than I thought, when Remnants join with humans in war. The Pact was supposed to prevent such a—”
“Why?” Jia spoke over her shoulder, her head hung, hiding her tears. “Why did … ?” She couldn’t find the words. “There must have been another way.”
“Another way … yes.” Was he even listening to her? “What is this foulness I smell? A sour pall like milk on the turn. The circles …”
Jia started, sensing change. Shuffling around on her knees, her hair straggling in her face, she turned from the mirror to find Von Hart standing at the foot of the altar steps. His long red robe shimmered in the gloom, catching the daylight slanting through the broken doors.
“Master?”
“I must leave you,” he said. “I must return to the west. Back to where all this began.”
“Leave? How can you—”
“Your training is over, child. I have shown you all I can.”
“Then I’ll come with you! Guard you on the road!”
He might have laughed at this, but instead, in a gentle tone, he reminded her of her duty. “Jia, you took an oath to watch over the east, just as another watches over the west, safeguarding the Remnant world. A lone sword. A lone fire, ja? Will you forsake your honour, abandon the realm?”
To serve the Emperor of Zhongguo for all the time to come …
She climbed to her feet, her face like stone. He knew she could not.
“You will take the Eight Hand Mirror,” she said. It was a statement of fact, cold and flat. A measure of the loss he would leave her with, here in this nowhere place. “Won’t you?”
Tears welled up in her eyes, hot and unwanted.
For once, Von Hart looked like he didn’t know what to say.
“Come now.” His words were a whisper in the still. “It is time to put away childish things.” His brow troubled, he offered her a feeble smile and tapped his chest with his bony fingers, a little left of centre. “Remember that you can always see them in here.”
In that moment, the two of them were no longer master and student, but simply old friends. She wanted to fly down the steps and into his arms, bury her face in the smell of worn silk, the comfort of ginger and cinnamon. At the same time, she wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, demand that he never leave her side, never take her mirror away …
But she did neither of these things, knowing that he was right. Comfort had become a habit. A crutch.
Time will teach you other lessons. The value of sacrifice. The price of the truth.
Was this what he’d meant? Had he been preparing her for this parting earlier? He remained inscrutable, a mystery from another world, but Jia reckoned so. And the point of the lesson was clear. If she was to walk the path of the youxia, then she must learn to stand alone. That was what he was telling her. The tear that trickled down her cheek was only for him; how much she would miss his counsel. His … love.
“Dry your eyes, Jia,” he told her. “I will return soon enough.”
But Jia could tell this was a lie. He did not mean to come back for a very long time.
NINE
Dragon dreams are deep and dark. And so is the nether.
Are my eyes open? Ben
wasn’t sure. It was like staring into a fathomless well, a vertiginous darkness in all directions, rendering him a mote, an atom. Insignificant. Adrift.
Am I dreaming? The thought flashed through his mind, a spark in the lightless womb. Am I dead? When he exhaled, a plume of breath frosted his beard, putting the lie to his fear. Pins and needles warmed his chest; his body was attempting to heal. He was alive. Asleep, but alive.
This was the nether, all right. He recognised the emptiness, recalling its chill. Dreaming, dazed, he somehow drifted in the gulf between worlds. Wasn’t that how Von Hart had described it? Even the unreal was real, he’d said. The paradox of existence. A dark dimension shifting with the tides of the unformed, the shadow of all that lived.
Wake up.
Who speaks? Ben turned his head, searching the darkness. No. Nothing. Quite literally, nothing. He had a sense of depth, a void all around him. At once, his heart shrank at the memory of the Lurkers, those pale watchdogs of Creation, spectres haunting the absence. The Lurkers mindlessly wandered the gulf—spawned, appointed by God knows what—stirred to purpose whenever an earthly incantation drew on the nether, channelling magic. The nether comprised a kind of fuel, a raw, empyreal substance (again, the envoy’s words), dormant in its natural state, but energised by an arcane word, a complex arrangement of symbols, an occult gesture on the earthly plane. When siphoned in small amounts, many a conjuror had gotten away with it. Summoning an imp. Shifting the weather. Making a princess fall for a frog … But greater spells required greater energy. Too much energy and the Lurkers would go swarming towards the source, drawn like sharks to blood, tentacles and claws extending, drooling for a bite of the real.
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