by T. A. Miles
“He must have a good reason,” Jiao Ren answered.
“Undoubtedly,” Huang Shang-san agreed. “But what? He did not explain much to me before he departed for the barbarian realms. He left me with rather cryptic instructions. Following them has led me here, shortly after you told me of the tremor you felt from the wall overlooking it. I find myself as puzzled as you.”
“Well, Lord Han Quan is one of the Seven Mystics and he is also a geomancer. Let us consult him on this matter.”
Huang Shang-san reached out for the young general. “Let us not, Jiao Ren. Among my instructions, was the explicit command to share them with no one.”
“You are sharing them with me,” Jiao Ren reminded.
The minister shook his head. “I am sharing only my thoughts with you as I ponder matters you know nothing about. Han Quan will have many questions and he will leave with answers I might not even realize I have given.”
Jiao Ren frowned. “I’m beginning to form questions of my own.”
The elder did not seem concerned to hear this and gave his attention back to the ceiling. He said, “You will respect my silence, because you respect Lord Xu Liang, who has undoubtedly given you instructions as well.”
“I am the chief lieutenant to the Empress’ army,” Jiao Ren said. “In matters of state and scholarship Xu Liang may supersede, but where the physical defense of the Empress and her city are concerned, I consider myself his equal. He cannot simply leave, and leave me to wonder why the Empress must sequester herself.”
Huang Shang-san smiled, evidently amused by Jiao Ren’s insistence in this matter. “I shall assume, then, that you were satisfied with his explanation, else you wouldn’t be standing here, reminding me of your title and responsibilities.”
Jiao Ren sighed, “You’re right. I still hold my rank because Lord Xu Liang trusts me.” In a moment, he added, “It is mutual. I would not question him—not openly or in secret—but I do feel unsure about what is going on in this city.”
“It is not this city alone,” Huang Shang-san corrected, “but all of Sheng Fan. The epicenter of the disturbance lies here, and it is for Empress Song Da-Xiao’s protection that Xu Liang left her in the care of the ancestors.”
“She is very young,” Jiao Ren said, finally letting out some of his true concern. “How long will she be able to maintain the state she is in? How will we even know if she cannot? Lord Xu has stationed a guard of a dozen men at the interior, whom no one has seen since his departure. The winds surround them and the Empress, and to what purpose other than slow starvation?
“And there is Fa Leng to consider. Xun squeezes the province with its advantage of a much nearer headquarters. By the time we replenish our troops, it is nearly time to do so again. This does not seem to me like Xu Liang’s typical way at handling rebellion.”
“That is because it is not,” Huang Shang-san answered with understanding. “Know that there are limits even to what Xu Liang can accomplish, particularly when he has divided himself between his homeland and the outside realms. We must be stronger now, general. And we must be patient.”
As the Minister of Ceremonies spoke, a rumble shuddered through the previously still air. The torch flames in the chamber beyond fell flat for a moment, then rose once again to light the empty sanctum.
Jiao Ren felt suddenly queasy and overheated. Beads of perspiration formed across his brow and he noticed Huang Shang-san wiping his own face with his sleeve. “Lord Huang...”
The elder nodded. “Yes, Jiao Ren. I felt it, but I cannot tell you what it was.”
Because you do not know or because you will not say? Even as the question formed in his mind, Jiao Ren bit the words back. He would know when it was time for him to know, and not before. In spite of his military rank, Huang Shang-san and others of the top ministers held more command in the Imperial City than he did. There was nothing to do but wait.
“HE’S HUMAN.”
“And I’m a dwarf! Can you make any other plain-as-day observations, elf?”
“You’re a dwarf without much armor,” Alere replied without tone. While Tarfan blustered and fumed about the implied threat, the elf added, “This man is heavily armored in a fashion I’ve never quite seen the likes of among men. The metal’s strangely pale. And here...what’s this emblem?”
“He’s a knight of Andaria,” Tarfan blurted angrily. “Wouldn’t expect a mountain elf to recognize one. Though, what a knight of Andaria is doing this far north...”
“Is he alive?” Xu Liang asked when it seemed that elf and dwarf were intent to leave out the only truly important detail concerning the stranger.
Alere was kneeling beside the unconscious man, but it was Tarfan who had to step forward and check his pulse as the elf made no motions to do so. The dwarf nodded once.
“What should we do?” Taya asked, mounted once again upon Guang Ci’s horse, having taken well to her daily riding beside the mystic she’d grown to admire and respect. Xu Liang treated her with patience even when she complained about her ill feelings or asked too many questions. He seemed to encourage her questions while Tarfan constantly enforced his guardianship upon her, telling her to sit still and be silent.
In this instance, the mystic gave his answer to everyone. “We must stop and tend to him lest he share his horse’s fate.”
Taya looked upon the frozen animal with pity. Then she remembered her pouch and the herbs, roots, and petals she always carried with her own journal—that wasn’t filled with Tarfan’s silly history lessons or diagrams of worthless artifacts. During the years she’d been traveling with her uncle, she had taken up a study of the plant life in different lands. Through reading, interrogation of locals, and experimentation, she had learned quite a lot about the various poisons and medicines found in nature. It was her secret desire to become a healer, and so she leapt at this first real opportunity with alacrity. “I can help!”
Everyone looked at her, even the guards who couldn’t possibly have understood what she said. The elf seemed disinterested, Bastien was neutrally quiet, and Fu Ran seemed mildly curious. Tarfan frowned dubiously.
Xu Liang, however, kept his eyes on the ice-rimed stranger and said—as if she were of equal status and importance to everyone else on this expedition, “Please, do so. The weather is looking disagreeable. I’d like to move away from these heavier clouds before it begins to snow again.”
CAMP WAS MADE again, only a few hours after they’d left the previous site. Taya went to work heating water and the herbs necessary to banish chill from the body. She added a few shreds of carrot and some honey to improve the taste and to add some nourishment. The stranger, removed from his ice cold shell of armor, lay in relatively dry shirt and trousers under a stack of blankets. He was breathing, but he’d yet to regain consciousness by the time Taya carried the herbal stew to him. She tried nudging him and speaking to him, but it was no use.
“If we can’t wake him, we may lose him after all,” she reported when Xu Liang entered the tent. “The chill inside will take him while he sleeps.”
The mystic observed the sleeping stranger for a moment, then asked if he could try something. Taya nodded, shocked that he would ask rather than simply do whatever he had in mind. She bobbed her head again when he issued his customary half-bow and approached what he clearly viewed as her patient. He knelt down beside the man, considered briefly, then touched a spot on the knight’s wrist without ceremony or ritual of any kind.
The young man groaned, his eyelids fluttered, and he stared bleary-eyed at Xu Liang. He seemed mildly startled, but otherwise reasonable, so Taya started to bring him his medicine, hoping he would be equally calm about it.
And then, as if suddenly remembering to panic, the knight’s eyes shot wide, showing the world their intense blue color. He bolted upright and did something that made Taya gasp out loud: He latched onto Xu Liang’s arm, twisting up the mystic’s silken sleeve in his tight grasp.
The questions came almost too quickly to understand.
“What’s happened? Where am I? My armor! Where is it?” He looked all around him, still gripping Xu Liang’s arm. “Where is Dawnfire?”
And then, in a tone Taya had never heard the mystic take with anyone, Xu Liang said, “Take your hand from my arm at once.” He wasn’t loud, simply...commanding.
The young man obeyed, a peculiar awe capturing his features and quieting his panic. Apology followed. “Please,” he started to say, but Xu Liang wouldn’t let him finish.
“You are disoriented,” the mystic said. “Be still and rest. Our healer will tend to your chill and when you are warmed again, you may recoup your belongings. Both they and you are safe here, so long as you do not attempt to harm any of us.”
Slowly, the stranger shook his head. “No... I wouldn’t. I won’t. I just...”
“Rest,” Xu Liang said again, softer this time. Then he stood and left, handing the affair over to—Taya beamed proudly to herself—their healer.
Her smile faded a bit when she saw the knight’s eyes shift from the tent entrance to her. His limp brown hair was curling as it dried, draping a face that wasn’t ugly by a good shot, but it was drawn and sad. His eyes were big wet pools of sky blue beneath a soft brow. The young man’s nose was straight with a decent shape to it and his lips were almost too generous. The rest of him was long—though not too long—and well arranged; a tad undernourished currently, but surely capable of bearing the weight of his armor.
He smiled half-heartedly at her. “I know I seem a wretch to look at right now, but I’ll do you no harm, little one.”
Taya felt her heart beat just a little faster. Give her a stout, bearded dwarf any day, but if she was going to be surrounded by young human men, thank the Heartstone of the Stormbright Caverns they were a handsome lot! Xu Liang was walking art, of course…once one got used to his exotic style. Taya was proud to have matured enough over the course of her current travels to understand such things now. The bodyguards were bold and dignified, if not handsome in their own right, and then there was Fu Ran, who had the impressive features of a titan. Even Bastien, with his sun-chafed skin and his scar wasn’t bad to look at. And the elf...well, he was an elf.
Taya carried her bowl to the Andarian and watched him take it in both hands.
For a moment he seemed to bask in the steam rising off the liquid mixture. Then he shrugged, “It doesn’t smell half bad.” He drank it down, displaying his hunger. Then he offered the bowl back to Taya with thanks. “It didn’t taste half bad either,” he added.
Taya beamed with pride again. Tarfan always blanched at her cooking and had to be tied down and have his jaw pried open to get some of her medicinal concoctions down his gullet.
“I hope that I didn’t offend that cleric,” the knight suddenly said. “I...”
“Cleric?” Taya was confused until she recalled that Andaria didn’t have sorcerers. Their magic-users were known as clerics. “You mean Xu Liang,” she said.
The knight frowned, puzzled. “That’s a curious name. I don’t think that I’ve ever heard one quite like it.”
“It’s Fanese,” Taya informed. “You have to be as well traveled as me and my uncle to have heard of a name like his. Or a name like Gai Ping’s, or Guang Ci’s, or Fu Ran’s, or Deng-”
“Please,” the knight interrupted, as she reveled in demonstrating the particular pronunciations of each guard. “I understand. Thank you. As I was about to say, if I’ve offended him, I’m sorry. I only didn’t expect to wake this morning under a roof of any kind, let alone beneath a kind stranger’s gaze.”
“It’s all right,” Taya took the liberty of saying. “I don’t think he holds grudges. He just has a lot on his mind right now. We weren’t planning to camp this early in the day, but we couldn’t just leave you up to your neck in snow.”
“Thank you,” the knight said, sounding weak while he appeared to think back on the severe cold outside.
Taya simply smiled, deciding she liked his gentle, polite way of speaking. Andarians were high on propriety, tradition, and ceremony. According to Tarfan the Andarians and the Fanese were the only people in the known world that could literally die of shame.
“Perhaps I’d better take a few moments rest,” the young knight said, and finally laid back down. “Only a few,” he murmured, pulling the blankets up to his chin and closing his big, pretty eyes. “And then I’ll...be...on my...”
Taya sighed wistfully as sleep claimed him. She brushed an errant tendril of hair from his boyish face and patted him gently on the cheek. “You’ve been a very good patient. The first one I haven’t had to chase down and hog tie.”
“SO, WHAT DO you think about the stranger?”
Xu Liang scarcely heard Fu Ran while he stood beside Blue Crane and watched the clouds ribbing overhead in the tumultuous mountain air. It was going to snow soon. There were already light flakes in the air and daylight left more swiftly in the mountains. If they were lucky they would have a few more hours to travel by before the darkness settled again. At this rate, it was going to take a week or longer just to get to the lower regions of the Alabaster Range. This was unacceptable. But going around the mountains would have taken longer. There was nothing they could do. Time would move as time did, without regard or remorse.
Fu Ran’s words eventually filtered into Xu Liang’s thoughts and he gave a belated reply. “He is...troubled.”
“How do you mean?” the large man asked.
Xu Liang lifted his hand to stroke Blue Crane’s soft pelt and thought of the knight’s sudden grip on his wrist, so tight that he could feel the man’s faint fever through his robe. He wondered now if it was arrogance or fear that made him react as he did to the man’s action. While he was not accustomed to being groped, he’d been outside of Sheng Fan enough to set aside certain expectations where the behavior of others was concerned. Certainly, Fu Ran had handled him with less respect in his rough way at shielding him from harm. Perhaps it had to do with the pain the man’s sudden, desperate touch had inflicted. But he could not have known how fragile Xu Liang currently was, how the faintest physical contact could amount to a serious affliction if he wasn’t mentally prepared for it.
“Xu Liang.”
He thought a moment more, then answered his friend. “I sense something about him that troubles me. Perhaps that is the better way of putting it.”
“What’s he doing in the Yvarian mountains?” Tarfan asked from his perch on a cold boulder, where he struggled to hold a map open against the wind. “That’s what I want to know. Knights of Eris aren’t cause seekers.”
“Eris?” Xu Liang inquired.
“Eristan,” the dwarf muttered. “The Divine Citadel, a temple to the highest order of the Andarian knighthood. They’re not soldiers of men or kings. They’re warriors of God.”
“Which one?” Fu Ran asked him.
“The One,” the dwarf answered with emphasis. “The True God, the Great and Glorious Father of Heaven and of the Winged Children, the Angels of Eris, Swords of Heaven.”
“Swords...” Xu Liang started.
Tarfan shook his head. “No relation to your Celestial Blades, mage. There’s a reason I wouldn’t let you wander civilized Andaria by yourself, didn’t you know? They’d have a man like you tied to a stake and set afire for blasphemy!”
“No,” Xu Liang said. “I didn’t know. I thought you said the Treskans were the ones to be concerned about in that aspect.”
Tarfan dropped his hands and therefore his map into his lap and sighed. “About the only thing separating Andaria from Treska is a pasture. The Andarians spread the faith that drives the Treskans. They don’t suffer sorcerers. The Andarians tolerate some rituals involving magic if it pertains properly to their religion.
“Like, for example, if an officially recognized cleric prays over a dying soldier that he be saved and chants a healing spell that does, in fact, save him, its considered God’s mercy, or something to that effect. Summoning the wind on a still day, using words they couldn’t eve
n repeat properly, let alone understand, is called witchcraft. That earns you a stake and a toasty fire.”
Xu Liang couldn’t suppress the mildly sardonic smile that came to his lips as he considered that there may indeed have been barbarians in the western world. “Well then, let us try not to impress too offensive an image upon the young man before we send him on his way. We have little to spare, but perhaps...”
At that moment, someone cried out. It came from the only tent they’d set up, leaving no question as to who it was.
Xu Liang walked away from Blue Crane to investigate. Fu Ran followed with Tarfan sliding off his boulder to do the same. Guang Ci and Deng Po were about to enter, but Xu Liang waved them away, decided against a misunderstanding leading to anyone’s death or injury.
Inside, the knight was stalking around the tent, strapping on pieces of his armor as he searched for something. The look of distress on his face was almost painful to behold. He caught sight of Xu Liang and the others crowding in the entranceway and didn’t wait for them to say anything, demanding, “Where is Dawnfire?”
Xu Liang considered that such might have been the name given to his horse and took instant pity upon him, thinking that his mental faculties had suffered to such a degree that he believed the animal might be hidden in the tent.
“The animal has perished,” Xu Liang explained with the gentle patience one gave to a small child. He saw no other way to approach the man’s apparent mode of behavior.
The knight stopped his search, a look of abject dismay and confusion on his youthful features. “What?” He seemed to understand in the next moment and a half smile crept into his panicked expression. “Dawnfire’s not—it isn’t a horse. It’s a spear.”