by Laurence Yep
She was standing in the middle of a large platform. Here and there through the layers of muck, the wind had exposed a bare patch of marble. A row of pillars flanked either side, their bases covered in accumulated dirt and the flowery capitals at the top cracked and weathered. They had supported ornate arches, a few of which still rested on top of some pillars, but most had fallen and lay in piles of rubble. There was no sign that there had ever been a roof, so perhaps this place had been left to the open air.
At the very end, three giant stone columns stood just beyond the platform’s edge. They rose upward into the sky, their tops crumbled by time, but they looked vaguely like the dense branches of trees.
Before the three columns was a large bronze brazier on tripod legs, and she felt invisible strings tug her toward it. Despite the layer of soil, her soles felt the grooves worn into the floor by generations of feet.
As Scirye drew closer, she saw that the brazier was green with age and time had eaten small jagged holes into the side. The pillar closest to it was blackened from the smoke of past fires in the brazier. And there was just a trace of a sweet but stale odor of incense that still lingered in the bowl.
Then from her right a flute sounded high and sweet, and from her left a drum answered with cheerful thumps. From overhead she heard rustling sounds and saw living tree branches sprouting from the stone columns, and winding around the branches were flowered vines that cast down a heavy perfume.
The flautist, a man in a fur kilt, danced by with a high kicking step. From his head sprouted a pair of antlers. The drummer was a man in checkered pants and tunic. Little bells jingled on his cap, whose peak curled at the top. The musicians glided past her, playing their songs as they wove in and out among the columns and then disappeared.
Women in robes of brown and black and white feathers twirled after them, their capes flapping like wings as they pirouetted on bare feet. Rather than singing, they trilled like birds as they waved golden staffs with the heads of horses and other animals, some of which she did not recognize.
Next, women in dresses and caps of silver scales skipped after them, bending and straightening with a motion as fluid as dolphins swimming in the sea as they joined the dancers circling around the columns. A thin red line began to trickle from one column above the mulch at its base. Scirye knew the smell of blood by now. It reminded Scirye of the battle in the museum and it made her a bit queasy, but the little scarlet ribbon had the opposite effect on the dancers, sending them into a frantic pace.
Paws padded on the platform behind her and she turned in alarm to see a huge lion moving toward her. When she saw the rider, she felt even more scared.
It was Nanaia the Avenger, sitting upon a saddle of elephant hide. Her four hands were holding the same objects as her statue, and She was clad in armor of black scales held together with gold wire. On Her head was a helmet decorated with gilt and a wide down-turned metal brim. Tongues of fire danced around Her head like a tiara and down along Her cloaked shoulders, the flaming tips taking the shapes of swords, spears, and axes that swung back and forth.
Suddenly the pillars, the dancers, and the musicians vanished and Scirye was alone with the goddess and the lion. The great creature halted in front of her, so close that Scirye could see her reflection in his golden eyes and feel his warm breath.
Scirye knew she should bow, but she was frozen to the spot.
The flames on the goddess’s shoulders and head began to stream along the goddess’s scarlet cloak, and as it rose rippling in the air, Scirye could see the golden lining on the inside.
Slowly the cloak floated away from the goddess, rotating so that the colors had reversed—with the gold cloth now on the outside and the red cloth inside. Then the cloak drifted back to attach itself to Her, and the fire flowed upward again to become the holy, terrible flames anointing Her head and shoulders again.
When the goddess lifted Her lower left hand, the arrows rose from it and floated over to Scirye.
Scirye’s eyes were as wide as they could get. “W-what do you want me to do?”
Nanaia was as silent as ever. Scirye tried to look at Her face, but all she could see was the sharp-pointing arrowheads.
Impulsively, the girl stretched out her hand and grasped the shafts of the arrows. At her touch, they began to shine with a silvery radiance, and she felt a cold fire burn painlessly against her palm. Then the arrows melted into her skin, filling her with a pale light as if she were an empty glass. Her hand and then her arm and her whole body glowed softly, but the goddess, the pillars, the city, and the mountains disappeared and the world was dark around her.
And Scirye fell into it.
11
Bayang
The fool! The silly little fool! Any hatchling ought to have had the sense to run out of the room when she saw a statue moving. Bayang revised that ruefully: Make that any dragon hatchling—which perhaps was another reason why dragons lived so long and humans died so quickly.
Leaning forward, Bayang scooped the unconscious girl from the floor. Her body glowed alarmingly like a lamp. “We need a doctor,” Bayang said to Roxanna.
The stunned Sogdian girl recovered. “Yes, but first let me take you to the one of the guest rooms where she can lie down.”
With the frightened Kles fluttering close by, Bayang followed Roxanna out of the room. Scirye felt as light as a moonbeam in the dragon’s forelegs.
Bayang could have wept in frustration. Hadn’t I warned the hatchling that she was playing with fire when she got mixed up with a goddess? Her body was as fragile as a sparrow’s and yet she acted as if she were invulnerable. That’s what came of filling a hatchling’s head with all that romantic rubbish about heroic quests.
Roxanna settled into a trot through the maze of corridors, shouting to startled servants to make way. Bayang hurried along with Koko and Leech close behind her.
Once Bayang had heard that Roland wasn’t in Nova Hafnia, the dragon’s first impulse had been to go on by herself, but she knew the hatchlings would try to follow her. They would never have survived without her. She was not even sure they would with her.
Roxanna looked over her shoulder to stare in awe at Scirye. “I had no idea the Lady Scirye was the favorite of the goddess,” she said in a hushed, awed voice.
Bayang adjusted her grip on the hatchling. “After what the goddess just did to Scirye, ‘favorite’ might not be the right word. Right now it seems more like it ought to be ‘cursed.’”
Roxanna stopped before a yellow door. “In here,” she said, opening it.
Bayang eased through the doorway into a large room that the whole world had furnished. Thick Persian rugs covered the floors, but the chairs were of some Brazilian purplish red wood and the tables of some hard, dark African wood. There were several northern Chinese beds built upon brick platforms with openings on the front. Niches along the wall held fire imps that gave it a warm, friendly light.
As Bayang headed to the nearest bed, Kles darted ahead, adjusting the cushions before she laid down the girl.
“I’ll fetch the doctor,” Roxanna said, and ran from the room.
A few minutes later, Upach herself waddled in with cloths and a basin of water.
Scirye’s illuminated body did not seem to surprise the ifrit at all when she saw the hatchling. “The mistress sent me. Poor little chick,” she said. Bending over clumsily because of her many coats, Upach set the basin down on a small table next to the divan.
Kles had been sitting on the cushions next to his mistress. With barely a nod of thanks, the griffin soaked a cloth and then laid it lovingly over his mistress’s face. No nurse could have been more caring than Kles.
“Oceans that freeze, statues that move,” Upach muttered. “I won’t stand for it, you hear?”
At her whistle, lizards poked their heads out of the openings of the brick platform, tongues flicking out to test the new scents in the room. They seemed like smaller versions of the giant fire salamanders Leech had seen in Hawa
ii.
“Get to work, my lovelies,” Upach urged.
The heads retreated inside the platform and a moment later the openings began to glow red. Quickly the room began to warm.
“Ah, that’s more like it.” The ifrit began to shed one coat after another until there was a small mound of them by her feet. With them off and her hat removed, Bayang could see that Upach’s body and head were as thin as a rail and her skin was tan colored and smooth and unwrinkled. Without even eyebrows, her face had a new and unfinished look—like a statue that had just been sculpted out of wet clay. She was reduced to a robe of yellow gauze that seemed to float about her like a cloud above trousers of the same diaphanous material.
“Do you miss the desert much?” Leech asked.
“All the time.” Upach sighed. Squatting, she held her hands out toward the opening. “But without me to set things straight, they’d be running around like hens with the hawk diving.”
Bayang curled her body along the divan and Leech perched on the edge of a divan near Scirye. “Will she be okay?” he asked.
Bayang shrugged. “Only Nanaia knows.”
“Yeah,” Koko said, plopping down onto a padded stool, “and after seeing what she just did to Scirye, I’m not about to ask Big N why.”
12
Leech
“We’ve seen some pretty weird stuff, but this one really gives me the creeps,” Koko said with a shiver.
Leech scratched his head as he stared down at his unconscious friend. In the brutal world of San Francisco’s streets, he’d learned there were few people whom you could trust, so when you met one you treasured him or her. “Me, too, but I know this much. She’s a friend, so we have to help her.”
Koko stuck his feet out in front of him and stared at the tips of his boots. “Yeah, she’s not a bad kid—even if she’s nobility and cheats at cards.”
The badger was suspicious of everyone but Leech, so those few words meant that the cynical badger had admitted Scirye into that most rarefied company, his friends. In Koko’s mind, friendship was a bond stronger than any steel cable.
With nothing more to be said, the pair sat, keeping Scirye silent company.
When Roxanna returned, she was accompanied by her mother, Lady Miunai, and a kobold with the swarthy complexion and the potato nose of his kind. Only two feet high, he hardly seemed to have any waist but was all arms and legs.
“This is Dr. Goldemar,” Lady Miunai said, formally introducing him.
Stroking his red beard with one hand, the doctor waddled straight over to the bed. He tossed his medical bag up onto the bed and clambered after it. Kles, who had been sitting anxiously near Scirye’s head, fluttered over to the back of a chair, where he perched.
Dr. Goldemar tugged his beard as he studied the unconscious girl for a moment. “From what I hear, you need a priestess and not me.” Even so, he began to carry out a methodical examination.
While he did so, servants streamed in bearing silver trays heaped with food and drink, which they set down on tables.
“Upach,” Roxanna asked sweetly, “would you please carry out that errand that I told you earlier you might have to?”
“This is the first time I’ve been warm in months!” the ifrit complained, but she quickly got back into all her Arctic gear. “Are you sure, my girl?”
Roxanna nodded. “It may not be necessary, but we should take care of it just in case.”
With a heavy sigh, Upach stomped into the hallway.
With her typical competence, Roxanna oversaw the servants in filling plates with tidbits. She tried her best to interest the companions in eating, but even Koko was too worried to do more than nibble and Leech and Bayang had no appetite at all.
Finally, Prince Tarkhun strode into the room, snow melting on his boots and shedding his coat as he walked. He was sweaty, dirty, and tired, but he looked every inch the commanding prince. Two servants scuttled behind, one catching his coat while the other surreptitiously wiped up the little puddles the prince had left behind.
Prince Tarkhun stared in shock at the unconscious Scirye. “Why would Nana strike Lady Scirye down in our very own shrine?”
“It was a miracle, Father,” Roxanna said. “The statue of Nana moved, and when Lady Scirye touched it she fainted.”
“A miracle is when I’ve got twenty bucks in my pocket,” Koko whispered to Leech, “not getting knocked out.”
“Yeah, this seems like something else,” Leech agreed.
“But what could Lady Scirye possibly have done?” Prince Tarkhun said, still puzzled.
Kles cleared his throat. “She asked Nanaia to help her recover the stolen treasure and avenge her sister’s death.”
“Oh,” Lady Miunai cried, raising her fingertips to her lips.
With a sad shake of his head, Prince Tarkhun sat down in a chair. Somehow when he was on it, it seemed like a throne. “That was rash, indeed. We are always careful when we ask her for anything.”
Leech didn’t understand their uneasiness. “I thought Nanaia—I mean Nana helps people?”
“She does,” Prince Tarkhun said heavily, “but sometimes not in the way you might expect.”
“There is the story of the prince who lost his beloved wife,” Lady Miunai said. “So he promised Nana anything if She would bring his wife back. That night he heard someone knock on the door of his bedchamber. And when he opened it, there was his wife alive again. But she had no sooner put her arms around him than the prince himself fell dead. You see, Nana’s account books must always balance out.”
“So you got to watch out for the fine print in one of Her contracts?” Koko asked with a worried glance at Scirye.
“Exactly.” The prince sighed. “Heaven protect Lady Scirye if Nana is helping her.”
They regarded the unfortunate Scirye in silence. Finally, Leech asked, “What should we do?”
Prince Tarkhun inclined his head toward Lady Miunai. “I count on my wife’s counsel, so perhaps you should repeat your tale again.”
As Bayang began their story, Lady Miunai listened intently, asking a shrewd question every now and then but otherwise letting the dragon go on.
Lady Miunai swung a worried, compassionate gaze toward Scirye. “Poor girl. It seems like the goddess really has chosen her.”
“Ah, she’s waking up,” Dr. Goldemar suddenly interrupted, “and I have no idea why.”
They all turned to see that Scirye’s body was no longer shining. Instead, she was struggling to open her eyes.
13
Scirye
At first when Scirye came to and heard the rumbling, she thought she was in the middle of a thunderstorm. She quickly realized that it was her friends talking. The conversation stopped as soon as she had opened her eyes.
“Water,” a little kobold with a stethoscope said briskly. He placed his fingers on the underside of her wrist. “You had everyone worried for a little bit, my dear girl.”
As he took her pulse, Scirye stared up at the ceiling and tried to collect her scattered thoughts. With a chill, she remembered Nanaia.
“Lady, are you feeling better?” Kles asked. He’d fetched a small silver cup of water and was holding it in his paws.
Scirye became aware of how thirsty she was. Sitting up, she took the cup with her free hand, feeling the embossed decorations on her fingertips. “Yes,” she reassured him. After what she had just experienced, words seemed too limited for her thoughts.
The doctor took his time examining her, and Scirye was grateful for the delay. It was only when the doctor declared her fine that her friends gathered around her.
“What happened?” Leech asked. “You were just standing there in a trance before you fainted.”
“I was suddenly on this platform surrounded by pillars,” Scirye said. “Then they changed into a forest and these musicians and dancers. Some were dressed like animals, but others were birds and fish.”
“The creatures of the earth, the sky, and the sea,” Lady Miunai murmure
d thoughtfully.
Beside her, Kles stirred, but he let Scirye go on. “And Nanaia was riding her lion.”
“So it was the goddess who sent you a vision.” Lady Miunai made a sign, and Roxanna glanced at Scirye uneasily.
“Or you were just tired from your trip,” Prince Tarkhun said skeptically.
Scirye raised a hand to rub her forehead and noticed a dim light. She looked uneasily at her palm. The number “3” glowed there faintly.
“The goddess has marked you,” Lady Miunai said in a hushed voice.
“But what does it mean?” Bayang asked.
Scirye cradled her hand in her lap. “She tried to hand me some arrows. There were three of them.”
“I think a superbow would need special arrows,” Prince Tarkhun observed.
Kles gave a cough. “Lady, was there any clue in the vision about where the arrows might be?”
“Well, the goddess had these flames around her shoulders and head and they got real long and formed this kind of cape that turned inside out.” Scirye looked around, but everyone was as puzzled by it as she was.
“Was there anything else?” Leech prompted.
Scirye bit her lip a moment and then said, “Across from me was this mountain shaped like a lion.”
“Ah, that sounds like Riye Srukalleyis, the City of Death,” Kles said. He explained to the others, “It’s part of ancient Kushan where Yi battled a monster. A temple was built on the site to commemorate his heroics, and there were so many pilgrims that used to visit it that a city eventually grew up there, and a fair place it was until the Huns invaded many centuries later. The defenders destroyed the enemy host but died in the effort.”
“If it was a vision,” Scirye asked, rubbing her temple, “why didn’t She just tell me what I’m supposed to do?” She punched the sofa helplessly. “In the legends, gods and goddesses always make things clear to people.”