Raising Fire

by James Bennett

  “You!”

  “Yeah,” Ben said, the earth shuddering under him. “Like a bad penny, right?”

  The ridges of Mauntgraul’s brow rose in disbelief. Despite his present danger, Ben relished the dragon’s surprise. He wasn’t sure what he was doing—trying to talk the beast out of his attack was obviously pointless, and any battle, with his neck in a vice, would be over in seconds. Perhaps it was pride, making him reckless. He wanted the White Dog to see him, to realise that he’d survived, displaying the fortitude of the Red. To let Mauntgraul know that this wasn’t over. Not yet. There were still players in the game.

  The White Dog snorted, a plume of heat washing over Ben. Then the dragon gave a grunt. He turned his head, nodding at the crumbling precipice, then back at Ben. No more needed to be said. Ben’s survival, while remarkable, wasn’t going to last very long.

  With a grin, Mauntgraul turned back to the Cardinal.

  Ben had never felt smaller than in that moment. But this wasn’t about him. It was about the harp.

  A furnace swirled in the White Dog’s nostrils, his indrawn breath mustering heat, and Ben covered his head as a jet of emerald flame blasted the temple, crisping the dust in the air. Centuries-old stone bubbled and cracked, molten in the heat, the devastating blast of dragon fire. Smoke churned, sprigs of charcoal twisting here and there across the floor, True Names dancing in the haze. Unlucky. The smell of cooked meat—never as unpleasant as it should have been—drifted to Ben’s nostrils, acrid and sweet.

  His threat made, Mauntgraul bellowed at the woman at the lectern.

  “Give it to me!”

  The Cardinal, unlikely to understand wyrm tongue, responded in kind.

  “Out, Lucifer! I cast thee out! Into the fires of hell!”

  Mauntgraul, unmoved, drew in another breath.

  Then the Sister was there, pounding up the steps and, one-handed, clumsily, unslinging her shield from her back. In one practised motion, the assassin shouldered de Gori to one side, the Cardinal crying out as she tumbled down the steps, landing in an ungainly heap on the chamber floor, the soundboard tinkling away from her.

  The Sister brought up the Arimathean Shield. The broad silver disc reflected Mauntgraul’s surprise at this small human obstacle, and the snort of flame that he flurried in her direction seemed like an afterthought, for all its heat and force.

  The flames licked around the blessed armour, crackling left, right and centre but leaving the assassin untouched, the Sister steadying herself against the rocking lectern. Ben could’ve told her that it was a bad idea. The White Dog drew himself up, a laugh rumbling from his throat, tail swishing back and forth, and his amusement burst into a piercing scream.

  Ben clapped his hands over his ears, his skull ringing. The Sister wasn’t so lucky. Even as the echoes rebounded off her shield, Mauntgraul’s shriek, the notorious cry of the Cornutus Quiritor, struck the woman with full force. Ben watched, his gorge rising, as the Sister’s skin took flight from her bones, the dissonance stripping her of flesh. Her head vanished in a crimson mist, a mess of clothing, bones and viscera slopping to the chamber floor, the Arimathean Shield clanging over her remains like a makeshift headstone.

  Give my regards to the saints …

  Helpless, he watched as Mauntgraul stretched out his neck, a great black eye peering into the chamber. The dragon gave a satisfied grunt at his handiwork, smoke pluming across the scene. When the smoke cleared, he was crooking a claw towards the Cardinal, who was struggling to rise, to crawl towards the fallen fragment of the harp.

  She’d only just touched it with her fingertips when a foot came down on her hand with a brittle crunch of bone. Jia stood over her, her bruised face a mask. Dropping into a crouch—and ignoring the Cardinal’s furious wail—the sin-you retrieved the artefact, rising to her feet in a halo of silver. As Ben looked on, she pressed the manacle around her wrist to the radiant metal, the silver band relinquishing its hold at once, liquefying in rays of light, mercurial beads flowing into the greater fragment. Longing to be whole.

  “Jia! Wait!”

  If the sin-you heard him in the uproar, she didn’t pay him any mind. In three quick steps, she crossed the space and picked up the Arimathean Shield.

  Mauntgraul lunged for her, but she met the descent of his fangs by hurling the disc, the glowing relic bouncing off his snout with a reverberating clang. As the White Dog recoiled, Jia raced up the steps to the lectern, vaulted over the edge and flew towards the dragon, straight for his breast …

  Before Mauntgraul had a chance to recover, she had plucked the harmonic curve from between his scales and was dropping to the chamber floor. A woman fell, but a sin-you landed, four golden hooves adding to the cracks on the flagstones. The fragments, Ben noticed, had been drawn into her transformation, tightly wound in her mane, a practised effort of will. The dragon turned, a claw lashing out, but Jia was too quick for him. In a blur of green and gold, she galloped towards the shattered wall, navigating the shifting ground stepping-stone style, racing over the torrent of stone. Mane flying, her golden horn spearing the dust, she leapt out into space.

  With another terrible shriek, Mauntgraul lumbered after her, his wings unfolding, smashing the dome overhead into smithereens.

  When the dust cleared, sin-you and dragon were gone.

  No.

  Bit by bit, the Invisible Church was losing its grip on the rock face, the weight of the collapsing chamber dragging the rest of the edifice behind it, turret, buttress and cloister. Blocks of stone tumbled into the gulf, booming down the slopes and into the valley, an avalanche of ruin.

  Ben yelled. The platform went surfing over the earth like a raft towards the edge of a waterfall, the precipice approaching fast. Chains clanking, he spun around on his knees, seeking an escape, and his eyes fell on the statues lining the courtroom, a section of the wall still attached to the ground.

  A thin grey figure clung to the feet of a saint, her lips trembling with prayer. Dust covered her from head to foot, but he recognised the old woman even in her fear: Evangelista de Gori, the new Cardinal fallen from grace, watching her little empire crumble.

  Cast into hell with the rest of us.

  He almost felt sorry for her.

  Moments before the dislodged platform sailed out over the gulf, spinning into rubble, he heard de Gori’s screech, a desperate parting plea.

  “Find her. Recover the harp. Deliver us from evil!”

  Then, collared and chained, Ben sailed out over nothing.

  PART THREE

  Mirror Kingdom

  Mirrored in the past, the eye may see

  the faces of the centuries-to-be.

  Old Chinese saying

  Lantau Island, a few days ago

  Dust covered the temple steps. Later, Jia feared, there would be blood.

  The moment the Zhoukoudian hills started to shake, something long buried stirring inside them, she had galloped to the island as fast as she could. A wailing trail of dust marked her progress from Beijing, a journey of a thousand miles reduced to the passing of a night. Now, a sleek equine shape, a green and gold blur, shot over Tsing Ma Bridge from the mainland, past the traffic and the airport and the theme park and through the wooded peaks where the Tian Tan Buddha looked down on the land, the giant bronze dome of the statue’s head gleaming under the flat winter sky. Trees and power lines rattled in her wake. Tourists clutched at maps in the startling gust of wind. The shadow fleeting by belonged to a creature that most would have taken for a horse, had they the eyes to track her, and all of them would have been wrong.

  Onward Jia raced, into the wild limits of the island and along the peninsula, passing villages where these days no one lived, a shoreline littered with garbage from nearby Hong Kong and the rotting barnacled hulls of boats, an old fort abandoned since the Opium Wars and a lighthouse with a shattered lamp. Eventually, with a pop of air, a flurry of leaves and a storm of stirred-up dust, she thundered to a halt on this, the summit of the cape, h
er emerald mane falling still. When the dust settled, she looked at the steps leading up to the temple, all one hundred of them bearing the imprints of treacherous feet.

  The temple loomed above her, a crumbling edifice of untold years. The godless place rested on a cliff edge three hundred feet above the waters, the morning tide swirling between jagged rocks. From here, the southernmost tip of the Fan Lau peninsula, the mouth of the Pearl River opened in a grey-green vista. The one remaining spire of the temple stretched like an elaborate cake up to the heavens, an unsteady tapering finger of stone adorned by tiers of upturned eaves where dragons coiled, their alabaster scales covered in moss. This February morning, the temple stood as ruined, as forgotten as ever—but panic, not peace, blew in on the breeze.

  Hooves had drawn to a halt, but feet made the ascent to the doors, bare on the steep stone steps. Caution mingled with Jia’s reverence, slowing her approach. Here in this place, so she believed, rested one of the oldest of China’s treasures. Hadn’t Von Hart invited her here all those years ago to look at the Eight Hand Mirror? The envoy extraordinary kept many secrets and she guessed the temple was one of them.

  A woman who appeared to be in her early thirties, her dark hair gathered down her spine in a long braided queue, passed into the shadow of the eaves with head bowed. Her pelt had melted into a tight-fitting suit, a sheen of green silk that covered her muscular curves, allowing her limbs freedom of movement. At her neck, a golden collar had absorbed her mane, locking her true shape in human attire. Sheathed on her back, two butterfly swords, the blades crossed, made a threat of her presence. She required no other armour, even here in the midst of catastrophe. She was a sin-you, a Remnant of the Ancient Country, a creature of truth and justice, an appointed judge of Zhongguo. She was also youxia, a warrior monk, and her body had long since been honed into a weapon. Her former master had seen to that.

  Ahead, the great wooden doors presented a dark and forbidding wall. As Jia drew closer, she made out the carvings that stretched across the panels, the old longevity pattern framing a summer idyll, a master and student sitting reading scrolls under a willow tree, rendered fifteen feet high. For a moment, she was young again, caught by a memory as faded and as lost as all the others.

  But this didn’t stop her. Jia Jing, the 793-year-old sin-you, shot out one leg and kicked open the doors to the temple.

  A hollow boom announced her arrival, the echoes racing to the end of the chamber beyond and back again. Somewhere high above, birds fluttered, the admonishing squawk of gulls or terns. Gazing up at the sky, chips of porcelain seen from the bottom of a well, she muttered under her breath, already missing the space and the light outside, a level battleground.

  The temple lay dusty and still. Torches guttered out with her entrance, the gloom lit by dull shafts of daylight falling through the narrow windows and gaps in the walls and roof. On either side of the chamber stretched alcoves lined with stubby statues, old gods sulking in the shadows. But Jia knew that she wasn’t alone.

  “Von Hart! Show yourself!”

  Feet whispering over the flagstones, she reached the spirit wall, passing the carved wings of the celestial long, the dragon protecting the heart of the temple. Every footstep gave her pain, as though her heart bled out through the soles of her feet. It was hard to come here. Hard to face the envoy as anything other than a friend, however estranged they had become. The walls around her, daubed with wards against fox spirits and yaksha demons, meant nothing to her. Let Yama himself come and take her, drag her into the Nine Dark Places, past the Mountain of Knives and the Forest of Swords, down into the fires of hell. Hadn’t her road been leading there from the start?

  “Fairy, speak to me. What have you done?”

  And from the gloom, he greeted her.

  “I said you would come, Daughter of Empires.” The echoes sounded arch, but she could hear the fear underneath, a bridge trying to reach her. “Ja. And come you have, the very next day.”

  “Von Hart, it was 1841.”

  He made a tutting sound. Whether he was annoyed with himself or her, she couldn’t tell.

  “Well, you are here. That’s what counts.”

  “I have come for nothing other than the truth.” As she proceeded, seeking the source of his voice, Jia’s feet crunched on the litter under her feet, the splintered pews and fallen beams, the grit washed in by the wind. “Have you gone mad? I heard a familiar strain upon the air and tracked the sound to the Zhoukoudian hills. There, I found only echoes. But the hills are shaking to tear themselves apart. Beijing shudders with your treachery.”

  Von Hart sniffed. When he spoke again, his voice grew louder and then faded, and she realised he was looking around the place, taking in the scene.

  “This place is such a dump,” he said. “Ein drecksloch, ja? This temple, the monks of old said, was a gift from the gods, built from the stones of Mount Kun-Lun where the Five August Ones held court, presiding over the world. Regardless of how the world has forgotten it—forgotten us, Jia Jing—the temple still stands as a fortress and a shrine, a stronghold of the real against the Dark Frontier. You are standing at an ancient axis of magic. Still, it’s a dump nevertheless.”

  Whatever he had in mind, whatever he was planning, Jia didn’t want to give him any more time.

  “That isn’t an answer. I’ve read my history. I know what sleeps under Zhoukoudian. Have you unleashed destruction on us all?”

  But she was accusing rather than asking. Why, hadn’t he been the one to suggest such a thing, albeit cryptically, in the House of the Sleeping Dragon two hundred years ago? Why would the Guild or the Chapter want to rouse a Remnant? he’d asked her. A question, considering recent events (not to mention the name of the tavern), that was as good as a confession. All the same, she wanted to hear it from his lips.

  “I’m known for my fondness of gambling games, mein engel. This one, I think, is called roulette, played upon the wheel of fate. We roll the dice. We take our chances.”

  “You’re also fond of riddles.” Why is he so hard to read? “I am a sin-you, the last wakeful one of my kind. I should see the truth before me. Should’ve seen it all along.” She said this to herself as much as to him. “Why is it I can’t?”

  But he’d already told her, long ago in Xanadu.

  I had heard that your kind see much, truth from lie, the real from illusion, and it fascinated me so. How could one stand before such a creature, his heart rendered as naked as a babe? … Well, I’ll tell you. I am a fairy, one of a race that you call the Xian. We are known for our glamour and tricks …

  “Then tell me,” he said. “What do you believe?”

  It was a joke, of course. One of his terrible jokes. Her presence here revealed her conviction, loud and clear.

  “You have the means. Your fragment of the harp,” she said. “Forget this folly. Before the White Dog breaks free.”

  “A time will come for the dragon to fall,” the echoes said. “For now, think of him as a distraction.”

  “A distraction from what?”

  “Why, to keep the eyes of the world averted from us, of course. I can save us, you see. I can save us all. Yet I cannot do so alone. No one must learn of my schemes or guess at my objective.”

  “Which is what, exactly?”

  “There is something that belongs to me. I would have it back.”

  “I thought you just took what you wanted, Von Hart. Or did you finally find something without a price?”

  “Oh, I know who keeps it,” he said, and he sounded genuinely peevish. “Alas, I don’t know where they hide. No amount of scrying will do when you don’t know where to look. And asking certain Remnants would give too much away. No. It’s better this way. Better to remain in the shadows.”

  Frustrated by his guessing games, her voice dropped into a hiss.

  “I’ll ask you again. Stop this madness.”

  “No,” he said.

  “Then in the name of the Lore, I’m forced to arrest—” she began,
but her words dried up in her throat as she reached the middle of the chamber, the light through the roof enough for her to see the dais ahead and the figure standing upon it.

  Von Hart was leaning on a lectern on one side of the platform, scratching out a message with a ridiculous quill, the feather belonging to a peacock or an ostrich or some other large bird. He glanced up at her, his piqued expression letting her know that she had caught him at something he would rather have kept hidden. Scratch scratch went the quill, and then he tore a narrow strip of paper from the page, holding it up before him between forefinger and thumb. He muttered something, a faint stream of symbols spilling from his lips and bobbing in the air. On the strip of paper, Jia caught an illegible line of characters—a short sentence or two, nothing more—and then Von Hart was blowing on it, the shred drifting aloft. Inexplicably, it curled up in embers and a wisp of smoke, vanishing before her eyes.

  “Your spells only seal your crimes,” she told him, afraid all the same. She was well aware of the power he held, the other-worldly strength of the creature before her. Could she best him if it came to it? She could try. “I told you. I will not spare you.”

  “It’s a message, that’s all. You know, I would’ve sent a text, but I’m afraid the recipient lost his phone. You could say he was somewhat … clumsy.”

  “A message?”

  “A warning,” he said. “A request. Before it’s too late.”

  “It is already too late.”

  “For you, perhaps.”

  Even in the gloom, he shone a little, whether from the light filtering through the roof or from his alien essence, she couldn’t tell. He’s like a candle, she thought as he stepped away from the lectern, a tall, thin spindle of wax. His long robes, a red silk kimono patterned with stars, looked tattered and worn. Perhaps he purchased the same article of clothing over and over and had a wardrobe full of them, for all she knew. This, she suspected, was one of the mysteries he loved to uphold as he went about his inscrutable, and evidently treacherous, business. He had always been a showman. No, a liar. His hair no longer flowed to his shoulders; the white-gold strands were short and parted, a severe look against the surrounding rubble. The European style matched his cheekbones, smooth blades framing the sensuous—no, shameless—buds of his lips. Hardly a wrinkle marked his face. It was only in his eyes, leaf-shaped, cold and the darkest violet, that she could see the centuries down which he had walked, facing gods knew what horrors, to meet her here in this ruined place on the edge of the realm. The edge of destruction.