by Julie C. Dao
“It’s not a game,” Shiro told him, chuckling, and Isao added tartly, “You can go by yourself on the way back, and tell us about the Crimson Army . . . if they let you go alive.”
“They don’t exist. It’s a myth,” Hideki told Wei and Xifeng.
“It’s one I haven’t heard,” Xifeng admitted.
“How do you know it’s a myth if you refuse to go?” Ken asked indignantly. He turned eagerly to Xifeng. “They live in caverns among the peaks. They serve no king, not even Emperor Jun, and owe their allegiance to no man. But they can be persuaded to fight for you if you have what they want.”
Isao snorted. “Like husbands? Marry them all off and they’d stop their nonsense.”
“They’re women?” Xifeng asked, blinking.
“Every one of them, and they’re the deadliest killers on the continent.” Ken ignored the others’ scoffs and drew a finger across his lips. “It’s said that they paint their mouths bright red with blood when they go to war. That’s why they’re called the Crimson Army.”
“Or perhaps they’re called that because they’re only stirred to anger once a month, when the moon is high and their own blood is flowing,” Isao added crudely.
“Enough,” Shiro said in a sharp voice. “We must be on our way. We’ll arrive at the main gates of the Great Forest in a week’s time, and the Imperial City is several more days beyond that.”
Wei rose and adjusted the bundles on the old gray horse, then mounted, giving Xifeng his hand. She swung up behind him and held him close, this man who wanted so much to think her perfect—who gazed at her like she was the brightest star in the sky. He had tied himself to her without any hope or promise in return.
Love killed your mother, Guma had always warned her. Give your heart and you lose your soul. She believed that to love another was to walk the edge of an abyss, and she had vowed never to let Xifeng fall. Not when the fates had marked her for something much greater.
But how could I help loving Wei? Xifeng thought, with mingled fear and sorrow. Already she could feel him relenting, his body relaxing into her arms.
“Please don’t be angry with me anymore,” she whispered.
“I’m not angry. Not with you.”
And that, Xifeng thought as the horses left the encampment, had to be enough.
The week passed by uneventfully, and on the final morning before they reached the gates of the Great Forest, they dismounted to stretch their legs, sore from riding. They walked the horses uphill toward the trading post where they would replenish their supplies.
Wei and Hideki took the lead, and Xifeng found Ken beside her at once. “We’ll be in the Imperial City soon enough,” he reassured her, seeing her grimace of pain. “By the time we arrive, you’ll be a trained horsewoman.”
She laughed. “Well, if the Emperor’s new concubine can travel this far, so can I . . . though she did ride in a palanquin. I wonder how she’s faring.”
“Likely better than she did in her old life. Do you envy her?”
“Why do you say that?” she asked, a bit defensively.
“I didn’t know whether her position was a desirable one. It seems concubines never have any choice in the matter. The Emperor summons them, and they go.”
Xifeng smiled, with a tinge of bitterness. “It’s a woman’s duty to obey.” She and the concubine shared that, except her masters were Guma and the spirits of magic. No, not Guma, she reminded herself. Not anymore.
The trading post proved to be small, but busy and well stocked. There were six or seven stalls and booths, each offering different goods. One merchant sold bolts of rough fabric for sacks and saddle blankets, and another displayed shoes and boots of supple leather. Another booth had wooden troughs boasting every grain imaginable: wild rice, millet, sorghum, broomcorn, and wheat.
I wish Guma could see this, she thought. It pained her that she could still care so much for someone she ought to hate. Wei came up beside her, and she pushed her aunt from her mind.
“I wish we could live here,” she said brightly. “We’d have everything we needed.”
He chuckled. “You wouldn’t like the thieves, though. It’s a dangerous place to be after dark, with all of this money and merchandise.”
Shiro and Ken went off to look at the leather boots, and Hideki planted himself at the crowded stall selling fragrant roasted meat. Wei stopped at a table displaying beautiful metalwork: pots and pans polished to a high sheen beside weapons of iron, steel, and bronze. One corner of the table even showcased a tiger skin, warm and soft beneath Xifeng’s fingers. She had never seen anything more beautiful—like fire and ink together in perfect, variegated stripes.
“Warhorses wear them for protection in battle,” Wei explained.
She could easily picture the tiger’s heart beating beneath this glorious skin. Had its killer grieved over its death, or had he taken its life without another thought, as she had done to the rabbits days ago?
As Wei began haggling over the price of a blade, Xifeng turned and saw a booth covered with shining metal pieces. She pushed through the crush of sweating bodies to examine them and found a collection of gleaming bronze mirrors. They winked invitingly at her in all shapes and sizes, some with ornate carvings and others simple and functional. A few were large enough to hang on a wall, but most were small enough to hold in her hand.
“May I help you?” The craftsman’s leering smile lacked five teeth, and his bloodshot eyes roamed down her body. “With a face like yours, you need an equally beautiful mirror, no? I’ll give you anything for half the price. Free of charge, even, if you ask me nicely.”
Two women with copper skin approached, chatting in another language, and the craftsman turned grudgingly to them. He seemed to understand what they said, but responded in the common tongue: “No discounts. Everything is full price.” The women frowned, muttering, and the man gave Xifeng an obvious, obscene wink to let her know his offer still stood.
She ignored him and examined a small, simple hand mirror with a rounded edge. Her reflection greeted her beneath a thin layer of dust, looking distorted in the polished bronze, like a stranger’s face.
Xifeng touched her smooth, blooming cheek, and something in the mirror caught her eye.
Over her shoulder, through the reflection of the teeming crowd, a man watched her. A bald, powerfully built man in plain monk’s robes, with flashing eyes like dark gems.
She spun, her pulse racing, but there was no such person behind her. She nearly screamed when she turned back to the mirror, for not only was he still there, but he now stood right behind her, close enough for his breath to stir the hairs around her face.
Her face . . .
The welt on Xifeng’s left cheek glared like a hideous sun. It was three times as big as before, stretching from her eye to her jaw, and wept green-tinged blood. She opened her mouth in a silent shriek, her reflection blurring as her hand shook. But the skin beneath her fingers was as perfect and smooth as ever. Behind her, the monk bowed and disappeared into the throng.
“Are you all right, my beauty?” the craftsman asked. He and the two customers were staring at her. “Shall I catch you if you faint?”
Xifeng threw the mirror down and rushed away. Her mind whirled with the memory of the two monks at the encampment who had vanished before daylight. She had dreamed about one of them, but that had only been a nightmare.
What, then, was this? Another evil vision in broad daylight, far away from Guma and her toxic incense?
She might have known Guma would take her revenge somehow. Having a man follow and frighten Xifeng might be her way of staying close, as she had promised.
Xifeng pushed through the crowds, tears blurring her eyes as she put as much distance between the mirror and herself as she could.
They traveled through the evening and the next morning without incident. Xifeng touched her face c
onstantly to make sure the wound hadn’t returned and glanced back as they rode, half fearing the monk would be lurking just behind. But she neither saw nor dreamed of him again, and tried to put him from her mind, knowing that anything to do with Guma would only worry and anger Wei.
In the afternoon, they arrived at an immense archway carved with flying dragons that towered hundreds of feet above them. Xifeng tipped her head back to take in the gateway. In less than a fortnight, they would arrive at the Imperial City, the jewel of the Kingdom of the Great Forest and the heart of the empire. She had read so much of this center of trade, language, and culture, and of the magnificent palace from which Emperor Jun reigned over all other kings on the continent of Feng Lu. Soon, she would see it all with her own eyes.
Shiro studied the narrow path ahead. “We’ll have to go single file. Hideki and I will lead on our horse, then Ken. Wei, you can ride in front of Isao . . .”
“We’ll take up the rear.” Wei’s firm, proud tone brooked no refusal, and the ambassador nodded in agreement.
They passed through the gate and were immediately swallowed up by the woodlands. The trees breathed chilly shadows of mist upon them, and the musty, ancient smell of earth and dew clung to each branch. Xifeng wondered how long this forest had stood here watching, and what it had seen in all the vast and terrible ages of men.
They rode in the near-silence the Great Forest seemed to command, stopping once to rest the horses. When night fell, it seemed more present in these woods than it did outside, though they were under the same sky. All lay still in a stagnant hush, but every now and then, a vine or a branch would move out of the corner of Xifeng’s eye—proof of something very small and quiet. And then there would be a soft rustling, like little feet scuttling across tree bark. It was what she had heard while waiting for the rabbits.
Wei tensed behind her; he heard it, too. In the murky twilight, they saw Isao turn and put a finger to his lips, and Wei gave a short nod.
As she turned around, conscious of being followed, Xifeng thought again of the monk. Had Guma sent him? Could her aunt’s reach extend all the way into the Great Forest? She wished Wei hadn’t insisted they take the rear, damn his pride, for they would have been protected by Isao riding behind. If someone attacked them now, she and Wei would be the first ones dead. She longed for Ken to ride near them instead of Isao; one of his stories might help calm her.
Wei stroked her hand soothingly, and she realized she had balled it into a fist. The little feet were still pattering above, broken by silences in which the creature hopped to the next tree.
“What could it be? Did we do the right thing, traveling at night?”
“Of course,” he assured her, and she tried to take comfort in his confidence.
The forest was deep and dark and old, she knew, and the trees were not like others. They had a way of bending light for their own purposes. In a larger party, this would not make a difference—there would always be someone more observant, more present, who could warn the others of an illusion—or the stalking approach of a predator. But for solitary travelers, only in the night could this woodland be trusted.
Well, perhaps trusted was the wrong word, Xifeng conceded.
Wei pulled the horse to an abrupt stop. The soldiers had halted on the path ahead. Ken and Isao turned this way and that, scanning the trees, but on the back of Hideki’s horse, Shiro had his head lowered, listening intently.
A whistling sound came from behind them, sharp and piercing. In one fluid motion, Wei dismounted and lifted Xifeng off the horse, pushing her into the trees. He signaled for her to stay low and she obeyed, crouching against the rough bark of a spruce. Hideki pulled Shiro from their horse as well and pushed him toward her. The little man knelt, a hand on the dagger at his belt.
Through the trees came a great rushing noise and a smell like hot metal. The whistling grew louder and lights appeared, waving curls of red and orange illuminating a dozen masked warriors on horseback. Several carried torches, bringing into view the weapon their leader spun above his head: a wicked, curved blade that glared in the firelight, as long as a man’s torso and sharp as sin, making a high-pitched screeching as it slashed through the air on an ebony rope.
“Great lords above us,” Shiro whispered, his eyes on the glinting scythe.
Wei, Ken, and Hideki unsheathed their weapons and faced the attackers. Xifeng dug her nails into the tree as Isao leapt in front of the other men. She had dismissed him for his vanity, but what he lacked in modesty, he more than made up for in courage.
“Who are you?” he shouted. “What do you want?”
It happened in an instant: the scythe came down quicker than the eye could see, and Isao collapsed. The top half of his body flew one way, and the bottom half the other. Something wet sprayed on the ferns in front of Shiro and Xifeng, steaming in the cool air.
With a roar, Hideki hurtled forward as the bloodstained scythe completed its arc and came down again, meeting his sword with a colossal crash. With both hands on the hilt, Hideki sent it flying back toward its attacker, who barreled off his horse to avoid the incoming blade. A sickening thud sounded as the blade embedded itself into the man behind him. Several of the other assassins dismounted and rushed toward Wei and Ken, who struggled to hold them off.
“I have to help them,” Shiro said through gritted teeth. “I can’t hide here like a coward.”
“You’ll be killed,” Xifeng hissed, watching a faceless warrior’s sword narrowly miss Wei’s head. Her eyes kept falling on the halves of Isao’s body, now trampled in the brawl. His head twisted at an unnatural angle, and his eyes remained open, staring blankly in her direction. She imagined Wei like that, blind, mute, and utterly lost to her, and clutched Shiro’s arm, barely breathing.
Wei narrowly dodged a spear and planted his sword into his opponent’s chest, the two men whirling in a lethal dance. He threw his enemy to the ground and forced his weight upon the hilt of the sword, grinding its blade through flesh and bone.
He did not see the man with the scythe approaching, the rope looped around one hand as he lifted the blade above Wei’s back.
Shiro swore in his native language and wrenched his arm from Xifeng’s grip. He dashed onto the path and stabbed Wei’s attacker deep in his left calf. The metallic stench of blood and ruined flesh filled the air as the man screamed, a terrible keening wail that chilled Xifeng to her core. Wei spun around, eyes glittering, and beheaded the man with one powerful swipe of his sword, drenching Shiro in the gore that emerged.
“I’m all right,” Shiro growled at Wei, spitting out the man’s blood. “See to Ken.”
Xifeng cried out in horror when she saw the young soldier’s plight. He stood in a circle of blazing branches, cornered by the attackers wielding the torches. At first, one of them appeared to be trying to save Ken, flinging liquid at him from a metal flask.
But it was too thick to be water, and Xifeng realized—when the others applied their torches to Ken’s body and the fire raged even more ferociously—that the assassin had been flinging oil.
Hideki and Wei rushed to save him, but it was too late. Within seconds, Ken’s body had become an inferno of red-and-orange tongues lapping at his skin. A sob ripped through Xifeng’s throat as she watched him writhe in a haze of blood and smoke and bodies, finally collapsing to the ground as the flames consumed him. Ken, with his shy ways and his stories and his boyish love of adventure—gone.
Shiro shouted his name, then turned his anguished face in Xifeng’s direction, eyes fixed above her in horror. She heard a great rustling, and this time, she did not resist. She turned her face upward and screamed at what she saw.
Faces, thousands of beastly faces in the treetops. They belonged to no earthly man, for they were red like fire, red like love and death, and hovered between the leaves like bloody fruit. They gazed with equal hatred upon Wei’s group and the masked attackers.
/> Wei and Hideki were still fighting off the remaining assassins, but even the sharp grating of metal upon metal could not hide what came next: a sound in the trees like a collective breath, as though all of the faces inhaled together.
Xifeng crawled backward, away from the tree in which a dozen of them glimmered like demonic stars. She did not want to be close by when they exhaled.
Tears for Ken burned her cheeks as Shiro yelled, “Tengaru!”
In the brief interlude that followed, she thought how cruelly ironic it was that the young soldier had died right before he could see the beings he had heard of in his grandmother’s stories. A hysterical laugh escaped her, drowned out by a fierce, roaring rush of wind—the exhale she had anticipated—and the tengaru leapt from the trees.
The men on the path turned as one. In the firelight, the demons’ true faces were revealed in all of their terrifying glory: ancient and wild, not quite horse and not altogether inhuman. Their long, angular heads ended in two narrow nostrils and a slash of a sharp-toothed mouth, and were crowned with two viciously curved horns of ivory. Their eyes flared like night fire, full of life and intelligence . . . and hatred, as their pointed ears swiveled to catch the sound of one of the assassins wetting himself noisily.
Their slim, orange-red bodies smelled like the forest itself, like ancient soil unearthed from the bowels of the world. Xifeng shuddered at the wrongness of them, of the horse’s head and neck poised on a lithe wildcat’s body, with a barbed, serpentine tail of soot-black.
Shiro threw himself in front of Wei and Hideki. “We do not mean any harm,” he said in a calm, firm voice. He gripped his dagger, but it was pointed downward toward his feet. “We are only travelers on our way to the Imperial City.”
The tengaru numbered in the hundreds and were the size of large dogs. Five talons emerged from each of their massive paws. Ferns and shrubs fell apart beneath their lethal points, and Xifeng had no doubt flesh would as well.