by T. A. Miles
At sixty-six, Xu Mi yet retained her grace, though a chronic leg pain confined her to sitting most of the day. She had mentioned it in a letter over a year ago, but only in passing, and in the midst of reminding him why she couldn’t stand to greet him, she apologized for complaining. He kissed her on the cheek and let her know that she was not, then sat across from her on the garden terrace connected to her rooms.
They spoke of the unpleasant weather, of his brothers’ children, of his own decision to marry, and of the Empress. Xu Liang mentioned that Song Da-Xiao did not feel her best and Xu Mi answered that she would pray for the Empress. He appreciated her sentiment and thanked her on the Empress’ behalf.
He said nothing to her of the politics of the court, or of the politics between her husband and himself. He had extended a rope over the distance between himself and Xu Hong, and could now only wait to see whether Xu Hong would take it for a bridge, or for a tiger’s tail.
TRAINING FOR WHAT was to come became more rigorous in the days nearing departure. It became more and more clear to Tristus that neither Shirisae nor Xu Liang would likely be returning before that happened. He would pray for all of their unlikely family, perhaps especially for Shirisae, since he would have thought her journey overall shorter than Xu Liang’s and she still was not back. But perhaps they’d come to some difficulty locating the village. If it had been ravaged by disease near a half century ago—as Xu Liang’s dream suggested—or decimated by war, then it had very probably been left behind and forgotten.
Still, the whole matter kept Tristus up nights when he should have been asleep. He wasn’t sure what kept him able to focus on his work, save sheer determination not to embarrass Xu Liang. He would have said that Alere was faring no better, except that elves seemed better equipped to get by on fewer comforts. Alere especially.
“Have you thought much about us going in opposite directions?” he asked the elf, entirely out of the blue while they were sat down to the evening meal. They’d been living all but alone in the house since the others had gone, or in Guang Ci’s case, been assigned to the Empress. Taya came and went, as circumstances dictated. Periodically, Tristus did also go to check in on Song Da-Xiao and help to relieve any recurring symptoms. They all seemed stably mild for the time being.
“I have,” Alere finally said, reminding Tristus in the process that he had even asked a question.
Tristus looked across the table at him. “It’s the first time each of us will be in a separate place since…well, since before any of us met.”
“It is,” Alere agreed. He hovered over his food with no particular interest, but he hadn’t shown particular interest in much of anything lately.
Tristus felt like he’d been watching them fall distant from one another for quite some time. They had moments of meeting, but those moments never lasted. If fault was important, Tristus suspected he knew where most of it lay. “Alere…”
“It’s not anything you’ve done,” Alere said in a clairvoyant moment.
Though moments of aggression were rare with the elf—and his tone wasn’t especially forceful in the moment—Tristus felt as if he’d reached for something and had his hand smacked away. He placed his utensils down on top of the bowl he’d been eating from and folded them beneath his chin. A moment’s silence was granted his friend, and then he said quietly, “All right.”
And that was when Alere got up to leave.
Tristus followed him immediately. “Alere, wait.”
The elf would not. He abandoned the common room and stalked the main hallway to the front doors of the house.
Tristus went along after him, not saying anything for the moment, but simply ensuring that they each wound up in the same place. That place was outside, passed two of the house staff—who Tristus lost a few steps in order to exchange an evening greeting with—and across the stone yard of the north houses. It was easy to determine that the stables were Alere’s destination, so Tristus allowed the elf several steps ahead of him, doubting very highly that he would take Breigh and flee the area altogether.
When Tristus arrived at the doors, he found Alere at Breigh’s gate. “Alere, what are you doing?” he asked, if only to assure himself that no one was going anywhere.
“I’ve decided to brush her,” Alere answered, as if it were as simple as all that.
“Rather sudden,” Tristus commented, and was for the most part ignored.
He watched Alere retrieve a brush and enter Breigh’s compartment. The silence that followed became rapidly filled with the various ways in which Tristus could approach a real conversation with Alere, and the various ways in which he could be warded off.
A murmur came from the direction of Breigh and her rider. Tristus took that for invitation, at least in a loose sense, and walked over to the open gate. It was only apart far enough for Alere to have slipped through, so Tristus made sure to leave it that way, putting himself in the gap directly. If there was going to be another event of leaving, Alere was going to have to climb over the gate. As it was, the elf showed no interest in escape. He simply stood beside Breigh, running the stiff bristles through her mane, which was very close in color—or a lack of color—to Alere’s. They both had gray eyes as well, marking how much a pair they were actually meant to be.
“I thought I heard you say something,” Tristus said eventually.
“I said everything is happening quickly,” Alere replied without looking at him.
“Too quickly,” Tristus guessed. It was an easy guess to make since he felt the same way himself.
Alere began to nod, but didn’t finish the motion. As well, his hand slowed to a near stop with the brush. He seemed to struggle with what he would say next. When the words came, his voice sounded uncharacteristically fragile. “A part of me wishes I’d never come here.”
“Alere…” Tristus said, on a breath that quickly became heavy in his chest. He’d never been witness to the elf quite so emotional. Not in this way.
Alere frowned as if it were equally foreign to him. “I haven’t been scared since I was a child.”
Those were the words that unleashed tears, finally. Tristus wondered when the elf—younger than most of them and having been on his own from adolescence—might finally collapse beneath the weight of his expectations for himself. It required this; all of the surrogate family he had collected being drawn apart…to their ends, he might have feared. Or perhaps each of them would simply never come together again as they had before.
Tristus moved into the stall, past Breigh, who had bent her neck somewhat in order to look at her distraught elf. He patted her shoulder, by way of taking the brush from Alere. He deposited it onto a nearby stool, unsure whether or not it actually stayed there, and coaxed Alere into his arms. It was the first time the elf had allowed sheltering—as much of it as he had given Tristus when he was at his worst.
The moment seemed to call for words of some kind, to assure Alere that no ill changes would come of this separation. Everyone would see to their tasks and return. They’d all survived significant threat already. Tristus understood that, up until now, they’d done that together. All he could draw from for comparison would have been the southern campaign, but that was only two of them away and, he suspected, Alere hadn’t necessarily been coping well with that either. There was also the strain of new expectations on them to succeed in battle—in war, which Alere had already seen much of, but in an entirely different environment. Tristus wondered if it wasn’t all of the instability of Alere’s life finally meeting up with him, at the point where he was finally ready to be done with it.
Tristus had been to that crossing himself. He had coped with it by attaching as well, though he had put the majority of his attachment onto one person. There seemed many things Tristus could say in an attempt to relate or assure, but he continued to say nothing. He held Alere, and kissed the side of his head once, and came to realize in that moment that he could have done so much more, under different circumstances. Circumstances where th
ey were someplace they both felt safe, and at a time when Tristus could be assured that Alere felt as loved as he was suddenly prepared to love him.
THE AMOUNT OF TIME it was taking to locate a single village was ludicrous. Shirisae was not as well-received in the back country as she had been among the people of the Imperial City, or even of Jin Fu. The people they came across in the Yatzen Province were in isolated groups of small number, and they had a tendency to sidestep Shirisae when she rode by or drew too near to them. Even if they’d been less wary, she was not adept at dialects outside of Jianfeng. Thankfully, there were others to assist.
Among the guards, a man named Su Gong claimed to have come from the Yatzen region originally and was especially helpful in discerning what the locals were saying about Tiong Zhong when they had anything to say at all. That they regarded the village as cursed was expected, but beyond cursed, it was forbidden. No one would direct to where the village was and after the village was mentioned they were in a hurry to move on. There were no signposts to be found. Su Gong suggested that they had all been removed by the locals years ago, else allowed to be grown over. Any roads leading in would have been similarly dealt with. In other words, Tiong Zhong was meant to disappear from their memories and, they hoped, from their lives as well. Shirisae imagined forgetting had been reasonably successful, since they were still willing to live in the region at all, but they were certainly unwilling to dredge up any of the remains of what they had buried.
On a gray-blue morning with thunder tumbling in the distance, Shirisae wondered whether or not she should simply lead the others back to the Imperial City. She would have learned virtually nothing. Certainly nothing that Xu Liang might be able to use to aid him in lifting the curse or preventing it becoming a far worse disaster. There were so many lives at risk, and would it stop at Jianfeng? His dreams suggested it would not.
“What is there left to do?” she asked, wishing that Xu Liang was present. She knew that he would have an answer.
Kirlothden was beside her, grazing at the edge of a small clearing, through which a light mist descended past the canopy.
She watched the near invisible layers of moisture drifting, like sheer veils over the open space. Overhead, light clouds scuttled beneath darker ones. In her peripheral view, the edges of Firestorm let off small flares of silver static.
Are you responding to the storm, or to something else? She wondered.
Pang Xizhi arrived beside her, the lighter layers of her dresses lifting slightly in the pre-storm breeze. Her Fanese brown eyes moved over a setting Shirisae had studied for nearing half an hour, seeming to take in nothing important, confirming that there was nothing important to be taken in.
The guards were performing active searches of their own nearby. Perhaps it was time to join them.
“Kirlothden,” Shirisae beckoned. She held her free hand out to receive him.
That was when Pang Xizhi raised her own hand to cover her mouth. With her other hand, she pointed across the clearing.
Shirisae looked, fixing her gaze quickly on the silhouette lurking among the trees. It had not been there previously.
“Stay here,” she commanded the girl, then quickly mounted Kirlothden and rode across the clearing. Holding Firestorm low, she cut aside bramble that threatened to impede her passage while keeping her eyes as much on the shadowed figure as possible. It seemed disinterested in movement, so perhaps it was stationary after all…but she was certain she had not seen it before.
She and Kirlothden made their way through the thick growth and toward the black form. The sounds of guards coming across to join her rose above the forest noises, and she ordered them to stop while she kept a safe distance from the figure while also trying to study it.
The figure was the height and basic form of a man, yet it had no features. There seemed no life about it, which would suggest it wasn’t a spirit of any kind and for that reason she had been blind to it. It was a literal shadow, but perhaps not a natural one.
Firestorm seemed to not grow further agitated by being near to it. Shirisae decided to test. Holding the Storm Blade out, she directed the head of the weapon at the motionless shadow. A charge bloomed from the edges of the blade, sending rigid vines of energy toward the shadow and in several directions away from it, deeper into the woods.
The figure before her vanished.
Pushing Kirlothden slowly forward, Shirisae looked to the ground where the shadow had been. She had to use the tip of Firestorm to push back the underbrush. Beneath it the soil was littered with fragments of a skeleton.
“We’ve found something!” she announced to the others.
WITHIN AN HOUR, Shirisae, Pang Xizhi, Tarfan, and the guardsmen had searched the near area, focusing primarily on the directions the magic from the Storm Blade had gone. Wan Yun and the others claimed that, in the moment the lightning was passing through the trees, other shadows had been illuminated. Partial skeletons were found at the approximate locations of each one that the guards and dwarf had noticed.
So, then they were some form of ghost, and the power of the blade had expunged them. It must have been that they were spirits with nary a sliver of brilliance left to them. They had no range, and no consciousness. They had become their own grave markers.
“This must be the start of the village’s boundaries,” Shirisae determined. “It must be nearby.”
“Can’t hardly blame the locals for wanting to forget about this,” Tarfan murmured while he stood scanning the woods. “I don’t see any signs of dwellings, though.”
“We’ll keep looking,” Shirisae assured him.
“Of all of the skeletons,” Wan Yun said, “Only very small bones were missing. Hands and feet especially.”
“Animals should have scattered all of the remains,” Shirisae said, agreeing with him that it was odd.
Thunder rolled overhead, overlapping with a second chorus of rumbles. The slow-moving storm had drawn nearer and was nearly on them. The scent of rain carried heavily by now and the crows were gathering in the trees.
The birds were not offended now, though when the corpses of this first set of victims would have been fresh, it appeared that no carrion beasts had wanted anything to do with them.
“Lady Huang Rin-fei!” one of the men shouted. “The village entrance!”
Good, Shirisae thought. She looked for each of the others visually, instructing them to move onward, toward their fellow. Tarfan was already on his way.
Pang Xizhi rose from where she’d been crouched looking at one of the exposed graves, then made her way through the brush toward her mare. Her hands were clean yet, and Shirisae did not expect otherwise. That she was willing to observe seemed more owed to the fact that she had never had an opportunity to observe outside of the palace gardens than to anything else. Observing and touching were not the same, and Shirisae had no worries that she would get overly curious. Thus far, it appeared that the handmaiden was careful and obedient. Though, Pang Xizhi possessing any curiosity at all helped Shirisae to feel that the girl was not quite so out of place.
“Are you all right?” Shirisae asked her anyway, because girls of a certain age, raised in palaces were sensitive. Most of the experience she had had with them was all in the last several months, but she knew that well by now. Conversations of her travels and of Yvaria had inspired most of them to huddle close to one another in nervous excitement about the very idea of such experiences as well as with relief that such adventuring was not required of them. Not before now, at least.
Pang Xizhi nodded in reply and Shirisae waited for her to proceed ahead of her and nearer to the company of the guards and Tarfan before she moved forward herself.
The guard who’d cried out waited for the rest of them beneath a leaning gate comprised of wooden posts overrun with foliage. Beyond it lay desolation.
“Tell me, lass, that this isn’t among the strangest things even your elf eyes have looked upon.”
Shirisae did not reply to the dwarf.
<
br /> The forest stopped abruptly just beyond the gate, opening onto buildings that were faded and broken with dark holes for windows. There was a shadow marker for every house, and then some. The featureless spirits stood like sentinels guarding their village, but in actuality they were simply anchored to their bones. Shirisae suspected the necromancer himself might have been responsible, that he had syphoned nearly all the energy left to them when they died. In doing so he had forbidden them passage, of any kind.
She told the others to stay back, and allowed Firestorm to cleanse the area. Eerily, the shadows gave no resistance.
AS ALERE HAD begun to fear, the morning led to the further movement of the troops. His own unit was among those who were to leave first, and with the guidance of Wen Haifu and Kong Dan, he was able to depart at the head of the men assigned to him without issue. Though, as he first sat upon Breigh staring out at the rows, it was nearly in him to abandon Sheng Fan altogether, in spite of everything. In his state, he scarcely had the imagination to guess how such an act would have been taken, but he knew that he would have regretted it instantly. He’d had similar attacks of heightened nerves and internal overreaction when he was a mere boy learning how to become a soldier—something he’d never wanted to do. He had overcome those moments, and he would overcome this. It was only that the sensation of displacement he currently felt had never been so pronounced.
Tristus was correct in suggesting that there were simply too many changes occurring at once. The knight had made the suggestion more than once after they’d returned to the house and settled into the common room to talk. Alere had fallen asleep without acknowledging most of what he had said. By morning, he found that Tristus had fallen asleep on some pillows he’d arranged near the window seat where Alere had been. He thanked Tristus when they were both awake, assured him that he would take care, and admitted internally that he yet loved him, though when Tristus tried to kiss him, he’d avoided. He was no longer as certain of what he wanted. Or maybe it was that he no longer knew if he should have what he wanted, since having could lead to losing.