Lost Lore: A Fantasy Anthology

by Ben Galley

  Prince Ma’s mouth twisted. “No. It is a farce by the warlocks to show their worth to the court. I’m certain my father realizes that. And I’m also sure he’s heard the rumblings from the temples that these earth tremors signify Heaven’s displeasure. There were several ranked lamas among those watching yesterday – now he’s given them a new narrative, and one where my father can claim responsibility if there are no more quakes.”

  Jhenna considered telling him about the terrible dream she’d had the night before, but finally decided that she should not, given the guilt he was clearly already carrying for bringing her to the cave yesterday.

  Prince Ma rose and put his hands on her shoulders. The intensity in his dark gaze made her shiver. “No more children will die like that when I am emperor, I promise you.”

  She lay in bed and listened to the thing sob.

  Her chamber was cold, as if the wooden shutters had been left open, but she remembered the servant pulling them shut while Jhenna had sat on the edge of her bed brushing her hair. It was also darker than the night before, although some moonlight still silvered the chamber. She wished desperately that she’d left a candle burning on the table when she’d gone to bed; she had wanted to, but in the end, had chided herself for her foolishness.

  She did indeed feel like quite the fool now, but for the wrong reason.

  Was it a ghost? The spirit of the child who had been sacrificed in the cave? If so, why would it haunt her? Could it be Consort Wei? For some reason, she found that thought even more terrifying.

  No, it sounded like a child. Small, wracking sobs, like it was trying to be quiet but failing.

  Slowly, the paralyzing fear bled away. Jhenna was still afraid, but her terror had lessened to where she could consider what she should do.

  If she threw off her blanket and lunged for the door, she could be outside her chamber in just a few moments. Or she could scream for a servant – one would come running soon enough.

  A shuddering cry from the shadows. Jhenna felt a flush of shame. She was the daughter of a Yari, and she feared a child’s ghost?

  Gathering her courage, she slipped from her bed and approached her cabinet. The sobbing quieted, but did not vanish.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, willing herself closer to whatever was huddled in the darkness. “I am not going to harm you.”

  A stupid thing to say. How could she harm a ghost?

  The thing fell silent, but Jhenna could tell that it was still there.

  Mastering her fear, she crouched down beside the shadow. Her skin goosepimpled, as if the legs of countless spiders were crawling up and down her arms.

  “It’s so cold there,” the ghost whispered. It was a child’s voice, laced with fear and pain.

  “There? Where is ‘there’?”

  “In the darkness. We’re so cold under the ground.”

  Jhenna swallowed. “Is that why…is that why you’ve come here?”

  “It’s warmer here. You are so bright and hot.”

  The ghost moved out of the shadows. Moonlight fell on pale skin, and Jhenna saw the ragged gash in the boy’s throat.

  “Oh,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry.”

  The ghost crept closer. “May I touch you?”

  Every instinct was telling Jhenna to dash for the chamber’s door, but she steeled herself. This poor, pitiful boy needed her. “You may,” she heard herself say, as if from far away.

  Tentatively, the ghost approached her. Its arms went around her neck, and she felt its tiny fingers clutch at her back…the same as her brother had once hugged her, before he’d disappeared beneath the hooves of the Mak Yari’s horse. She fought the urge to scream as the ghost’s small head rested on her shoulder. Where the spirit’s skin touched her own, it burned like ice. Jhenna smelled nothing, except perhaps for the faint scent of earth and loam.

  “Please,” the spirit said. “Help us get out.”

  “Us?”

  “The others. We are all scared and cold and want to go home.”

  Pity swelled in her chest. “I would help you if I could. But I cannot.”

  “Who can? Is there anyone?”

  The name tumbled from Jhenna’s lips before she could consider the wisdom of what she said. “Prince Ma. He has a kind heart. He would help you.”

  The cold fingers slipped from her back as the ghost pulled away from her. It receded into the shadows from where it had emerged, becoming more insubstantial, like smoke uncoiling in the sky.

  Then it was gone.

  Jhenna spent the next morning searching for the servant who had brought her to see Prince Ma the day before. She finally found him in a reception hall, directing two workers in the restoration of a statue of the Enlightened One, which must have been damaged during the recent quake that had shaken the city. A jagged crack had split the serene face of Sagewa Tain, an unsettling reminder of the wound in the ghost child’s throat. She begged him to ask Prince Ma to meet her later in the Labyrinth, and without asking her why, he bowed smoothly and left.

  She waited on the rosewood bench beneath the nek’avas tree until the late afternoon light faded and the shadows gathered beneath the gnarled boles and branches. Jhenna was just about to leave when she heard the ring of footsteps approaching on the copper paths. She quickly stood, smoothing her hair and robes.

  Prince Ma entered the small clearing. Something had happened to him: his face was haggard and drawn, and he gripped the hilt of his sword as if he meant to draw it. He saw where she was staring, and let his hand fall from the jeweled pommel.

  “My prince,” she asked, stepping forward in concern, “what has happened?”

  His eyes were troubled. “Consort, I …” His voice trailed away, as if he could not find the words to continue.

  “You saw it,” she said.

  He glanced at her sharply. “You…you saw it, too.”

  I sent it to you. Jhenna bit down on this admission. Dispatching a ghost to haunt someone was not something to claim lightly. “I did. It has come to me the last two nights, crying in my room.”

  Prince Ma rubbed unconsciously at his neck. “Last night was the first time for me. It’s the child from the cave.”

  “I know.”

  “It asked…it asked that I let it out. It said it is cold. And that there are other children in there. But nothing else. No monster. No demon. Just the spirits of small children, suffering in the darkness.”

  Jhenna could barely breathe. “What will you do, my prince?”

  “I must do something!” he cried, his voice cracking. “What kind of emperor would allow this to happen to those he had sworn under Heaven to protect?” He ran a shaking hand through his hair. “Today I went to the red tower. I have known the Autumn Warlock for my entire life. He pulled me from my mother. He has tutored me on how to be a just ruler, teaching me of the Seven Virtues, the Path, the Precepts of the Enlightened. I asked him how the Shan can allow such evil.”

  “What did he say?” Jhenna whispered.

  “He said that this was one of the oldest traditions in our people’s history. The sacrifices have occurred for a thousand years. But then he admitted something else.” Anger twisted the prince’s face. “He admitted that before, it was not children who were killed. He said that once it was the Winter Warlock whose lifeblood was drained upon that rock. That had always been the way. But Lo Jin changed that when he donned the white robes seventy years ago. He was a young man – the other three warlocks had died during the wars when the hordes boiled out of the Burning Lands. He did not want to be slain when next the earth shook or the sky wept blood, so he convinced the three new warlocks to accept a change to the ancient tradition. Now a child of great sorcerous talent would be murdered and placed beyond the door as an offering.”

  “So it should have been him,” she said softly. The evil of it all – to change place
s with an innocent child – chilled her. “Will you ask your father to reinstate the old way?”

  Prince Ma nodded. “Yes. But first I must make good on a promise I made last night.”

  “What was that?” Jhenna asked, though she knew already.

  “I am going to open the door.”

  Her horse tossed its head and whickered, its breath pluming in the early morning chill. Jhenna leaned forward and patted Windrunner’s side, murmuring nonsense words to try and soothe her stallion. Usually when she slipped from the stables before the sun had fully risen, it meant a fierce ride on the fields reserved for the imperial family, as if she and Windrunner were back on the steppes racing her cousins in the long grass.

  But today was different. They had leaped the low fence that fringed the paddock and made their way to the great arrow-straight northern road. She’d brought a simple gray cloak to hide her rich vestments, and had pulled up the cowl so that none of the farmers driving their animals toward the city would notice that she was not Shan. Now she waited on a knoll overlooking the road, Windrunner stamping his hooves impatiently, no doubt feeling cheated of his morning run.

  She recognized the prince from a distance, galloping along the road as if a pack of bloodwolves were nipping at his heels. He turned his horse from the road as he came closer and reined up beside her.

  “You should return to the palace.”

  Jhenna stuck her chin out and met his eyes brazenly. Mounted on her horse, she felt like the old Jhenna, the girl who had challenged the boys to archery contests and snuck away to hunt the white antelope during the Whelming Time. Not the meek imperial consort who bowed and scraped and tried her best to avoid being noticed. “I saw the ghost as well. I want to help him.”

  He tried to match her gaze, but finally looked away, sighing. “Very well. Just know that even my life may be forfeit for doing this.”

  “If you think that, we’ll keep on riding after we open the door. We’ll ride to the shore of the bitter sea, or to the great white waste, or to the Burning Lands. Shan is the greatest empire in the world, but it is not endless.”

  The prince reached out and gently touched her hand. “Exile would not be so terrible if you were by my side.”

  Jhenna wanted to tug down her cowl to hide her blush. “How will you open the door?”

  Prince Ma pulled his saddlebag up into his lap and untied the drawstring. “There are two doors, remember? I visited the red tower this morning and took this” – he gestured at something lashed to the side of his horse, the same twisted black staff the Winter Warlock had used to open the first stone door – “and this.” He withdrew from the bag, a key of heavy black iron. “This is for the inner sanctum. I saw it hanging in the tower before in a place of honor, and never knew what it was until the sorcerers used it in the cave.”

  “The staff will work for you?”

  The prince nodded. “Bae Fan told me when I spoke with him yesterday that the door will open for anyone, so long as they strike the stone with the staff of the Winter Warlock. I suppose that harkens back to the days when the warlocks themselves were sacrificed.” He cast a quick glance over his shoulder, at the distant peaked roofs of Lianjing and the red towers of the Shan sorcerers rising behind them. “Come, Consort Jhenna. We should hurry.”

  They rode north along the imperial road, keeping a good pace, though not one that would exhaust their horses. The last time, this journey had taken more than half a day, but since they were mounted and without those trundling wagons, Jhenna expected to reach Sleeping Dragon Valley soon after noon. They traded stories as they rode, tales of growing up on the steppes and in the court: Jhenna told the prince of the trials of strength that the tribes conducted every summer solstice, and how she had disguised herself as a boy one year and won a tiger claw necklace in the archery competition. In return, he spoke of one of his proudest moments as a child, when he had glimpsed an envoy from the porcelain city of Oramys sprinkle poison into the wine at an imperial banquet, and after the assassin had been apprehended, his father had gifted him with the sword he wore at his side to this day.

  When the sun had climbed high overhead, Prince Ma paused as they crested a hill and surveyed the road they had taken. His face tightened, and with a sinking feeling in her stomach, Jhenna followed his gaze. A thread of horsemen could just be glimpsed in the distance, and her suspicions were confirmed when something they wore glinted.

  “Who are they?” she asked the prince.

  He frowned. “Dragonhelms, almost certainly. My father wouldn’t entrust this task to regular soldiers.”

  “Do you think the warlocks are with them?”

  “Yes.”

  “What should we do?”

  The prince wheeled his horse around and kicked it into a canter. “We ride,” he cried back over his shoulder.

  By the time they reached the edge of the valley, the horsemen had closed the gap, but were not yet within arrow range. Jhenna could see them more clearly, though – her mother had always said she had eyes like a hawk – and the prince’s guess had been correct: their pursuers wore scale armor that rippled in the light, and their plumed helms were wrought into the shape of roaring dragons’ heads, their faces recessed within the open jaws.

  Prince Ma and Jhenna slid from their horses and led them carefully down the steep descent into the forest. Her heart seized in her chest several times when a hoof skittered on the loose scree, but the Great Sky had blessed them this day, and they all reached the bottom safely. The forest’s ground was equally treacherous, with the thick moss hiding deep divots that could easily break a horse’s leg, but Prince Ma insisted that they push on quickly, so Jhenna clung to her stallion’s back as they hurtled through the woods, praying that their luck would continue to hold.

  “How do you know which way to go?”

  The prince paused their headlong flight, searching the ground for something. “Look!” he said, pointing at what seemed to her to be just more moss. “I’ve been on enough hunts to know how to track a fawn in the forest. Forty city-Shan bumbling about is easy enough.”

  Yet despite this claim, it took the prince several long moments to decide which way they should go. He leaned forward in his saddle, his brow furrowed and his hands clutching at the reins. “There’s almost too many of them,” he said softly. “And they don’t move as one. It’s like trying to follow a herd of cats.”

  Distant noises drifted through the woods, so faint Jhenna couldn’t distinguish what she was hearing, but she had her suspicions. “We have to hurry,” she said, glancing behind her and peering through the endless rows of white trunks for their pursuers.

  “This way,” the prince said with what sounded like forced confidence, and he kicked his horse ahead. She plunged after him, branches clawing at her face.

  A slab of gray appeared through the bracken. It swelled larger, becoming the huge stone door set into the side of the hill. Jhenna hadn’t noticed it before, but the trees seemed to be shying away from the cave; several serpentine roots extended toward the clearing and then veered abruptly away, as if afraid to creep too close. That thought made her skin prickle.

  They dismounted and approached the great door. Prince Ma brandished the warlock’s staff as if it were a sword, holding it by its end. He and Jhenna shared a long look, and then he reached out tentatively and touched it against the stone.

  From the look of surprise on the prince’s face, he at least partly hadn’t expected anything to happen. But just as when the Winter Warlock had struck the door, a grinding began deep within the hill, and it began to swing open. Fetid, stale air washed over Jhenna, and she struggled to keep from coughing.

  Shouting and the sounds of horses blundering through the forest came from behind them. Prince Ma grabbed her arm and pulled her inside the cave just as a warhorse caparisoned in gleaming armor burst from among the trees and charged into the clearing. It reared bac
k, hooves churning, as the warrior in the black-enameled plate of the empire’s elite dragonhelms drew his sword and cried out in triumph.

  “I have them!”

  Prince Ma hauled her across the cave, toward the smaller door set in the far wall. He fumbled with the iron key; it fell clattering to the floor and skittered beside the white stone where the child had died. Growling a Shan curse she did not know, the prince lunged forward and scooped it from the ground, then turned back to Jhenna.

  “Wait, my prince!” implored the soldier, who had swung down from his horse and now stood silhouetted in the light of the entrance. “Speak with the warlock before you do anything, I beg you!”

  Prince Ma pressed the heavy iron key into her hand, his fingers lingering where they brushed hers. His face was shadowed in the cave’s darkness, but she could feel the intensity with which he was staring at her.

  “Jhenna,” he said, “open the door. I will keep them back. Let us bring peace to these poor children.”

  Then he turned away from her, steel rasping as he drew his sword.

  Pushing aside her rising panic, Jhenna shoved the key as far as it would go inside the rusted iron lock, and then using all her strength, she tried to twist it.

  Nothing happened.

  Swords clashed behind her. Jhenna spared a glance over her shoulder, even as she strained to turn the key. Prince Ma was warding away three dragonhelms, sweeping his blade in broad arcs, even as more of the soldiers streamed into the cave. Jhenna had watched enough duels out on the steppes that she knew he was no great warrior – the dragonhelms seemed hesitant to attack their prince, and metal only rang when they deflected his awkward swings away.

  “Stop this foolishness!”

  The soldiers stepped back and sheathed their swords as those words echoed in the cave. The voice was cracked by great age. Jhenna knew who it must be.

  The stooped Winter Warlock shuffled inside the cave, followed a step behind by the Autumn Warlock. They seemed not to be of the same mind: anger etched the older sorcerer’s lined face, but the taller sorcerer in his red robes looked fearful, staring at the imperial heir.