Five Kingdoms (7 page)

“Here,” Taya said, drawing his attention back to her.

The young dwarf held out a small packet. Xu Liang held his hand out to receive it, and Taya promptly placed it into his palm.

“Drop these herbs into some hot water and drink them,” she instructed firmly. Plainly, she was expecting resistance. “They’ll help you to sleep sounder.”

“I see,” Xu Liang replied. And then he bowed his head. “Thank you.”

“You are going to take them, aren’t you?” Taya asked while Xu Liang turned to the door.

Xu Liang looked over his shoulder at her. He nodded once again, making no promise beyond what may have been implied with the gesture. And then he opened the door to his temporary room.

Behind him, Taya let out an abrupt breath, and retreated back down the passage. Xu Liang listened to her muttering at his guards for a moment, and then closed himself into the small room. He stopped just inside the door and inspected the tiny package in his hand. The young dwarf had folded brown parchment around a mixture of dried berries and other herbal elements. He wondered how well they would actually enable him to sleep, if he were to obey her instructions.

And then he thought of the prospect of another night spent in turmoil with himself, but moreover with the Phoenix. The fire elves’ god was insistent that he not only live beyond his death, but that he relive all that had led him to their meeting—a meeting between a mortal man and a burning, relentless god.

Xu Liang wondered if he avoided their nightmare rendezvous, if the gift of dubious auspice would be revoked.

The Phoenix had emerged with the Storm Blade as its earthly conduit. The goddess of storms, and of renewal…Shi Tan, lover of Zan Jang, who was the god of the of the morning sky and herald of the rising sun…both of them servants of the Sun God, Cheng Yu. As the bearer of the Moon Blade, Xu Liang was the mortal champion of Mei Qiao. It occurred to him that his resurrection was perhaps by order of the Sun God himself, on behalf of his love and in the interest of the battle against the Dragon. And regardless of any of it, resurrection had afforded him the opportunity to resume his duty to the Empress and to Sheng Fan.

One should not avoid or attempt to suppress a blessing.

Xu Liang closed his fingers over the packet of sleeping remedy and carried himself to his bed. He deposited the herbs onto a stand along the way.

The night before
arriving in a new country was not to be one of sleeping. The lantern remained lit in the cabin Tristus shared with Tarfan and Alere. The old dwarf required it for his journal keeping, but even so, it would likely have kept its flame due to a shared lack of interest in either darkness or sleeping.

Tristus lay on his side within the lower bunk across from Tarfan, watching the smallish elder scratch his quill across pages that also appeared home to rough illustrations. By the look of it, his book had not been neglected. There was a thick portion of full pages for him to rest his hand upon while he busily filled another.

“Have you ever been so far from your home as Sheng Fan?” Tristus asked him.

Tarfan peered across at him, continuing to write. When his green eyes returned to the page in front of him, Tristus thought he might not answer. But then the dwarf said, “Not quite so far as that, lad. Not quite…so far as that.”

He seemed to be lost in concentration, and Tristus wondered if he should let him alone.

“I’ve traveled with Xu Liang before, mind you,” Tarfan said suddenly. “In fact, the both of us journeyed well into your country at one time, boy—in search of an ancient city.”

Tristus could only assume that it was Eris; there seemed to be no other city within the borders of Andaria that any mortal found as elusive or interesting. It was the very place that Tristus had gone in search of after his banishment. He wondered if it had been an earlier quest for the weapons that drew Xu Liang, but decided not to ask. Instead, he smiled at Tarfan and said, “How long ago was that?”

“Seven years,” the dwarf answered immediately.

“Seven years,” Tristus echoed. “Xu Liang must have been very young.”

It was at that moment that Tarfan cast him a sidelong glare. Whatever had passed through the dwarf’s mind in that moment, he said only, “Yes.”

Tristus considered saying nothing more for the night, and laid himself down on his back.

“Very near to your age, boy,” Tarfan continued. “A child prodigy. He’d already accomplished what some men require a lifetime to achieve.”

Tristus was not surprised by that, not nearly so much as he had been upon learning how young Alere was, and how much responsibility the elf had taken upon himself. Considering the amount of years Shirisae had to her—and that she had had to grow into her family duty—it was nearly shocking. The lifespans and the lifestyles of elves did not seem to require of them to accomplish tremendous feats of living before even their first century. But Alere was just twenty, and, according to him, he might not have a full century to his youth, as other elves did. The Verressi elves were fewer since being slaughtered wholesale by the keirveshen, and their lives were not granted to be as long as many of their kin. Tristus supposed, for that reason, that he should refrain from holding Alere to his apparent youth. He was the acting lord of his house, and a years-experienced soldier and hunter. In actuality, it was Tristus who had accomplished the least with his time in the relative order of things.

Well, that was not entirely accurate. He’d accomplished a good deal, but much of it had been nothing that he preferred to dwell on.

“What do you think it will be like in Sheng Fan?” Tristus decided to ask his companions, largely in order to avoid allowing his thoughts to take him down a darker route than he wanted to travel before sleeping.

“Like anyplace else,” came the voice of the occupant above Tristus’ bunk. “But with different people living there.”

Tristus could only smile at Alere when he spoke in such a manner. “That was not very romantic.”

“It wasn’t meant to be,” the elf replied, as if there had been no humor at all in Tristus’ comment.

It was an endearing quality of Alere’s, and Tristus couldn’t help that he laughed.

Whether or not he could help it, Tarfan seemed to have no interest in withholding his own laughter. It was to the sound of the old dwarf’s chortling that Tristus eventually drifted to sleep.

Xu Liang entered
the corridor of jade fire that had rimmed his consciousness since Vilciel. It was the passage to which all doors seemed to lead and within which he feared becoming eternally lost.

“Do not fear the memories that haunt you now,”
the voice of Ahjenta said, the memory of her words trailing him across the threshold of dreams.
“For they are things you have already seen and events you have already overcome.”

In the process of recalling her advice, the familiar form of Xiadao Lu charged toward him through the corridor. The rogue’s phantom raised his pole-axe to strike, and Xu Liang stepped to the side of his assault.

He felt the brush of lingering trauma that was the ghost’s substance in his mind. It raked hot across his shoulder, reminding him of the wound that had been the first of many assaults that would test the defenses of his spirit. It had struggled for many years to preserve the walls of its physical vessel. They would crumble, and he would pass to the Realm of the Sky, to be guided by the lights of the Celestial Dragons into the shelter and wisdom of the Jade Emperor’s sphere…or he would be pulled down into the Infernal Regions by shadow.

His hand went to his shoulder, as if he might hold the damage intact and prevent the escape of his spirit from his body. Except, his spirit was in motion now, while his body lay beneath the pinning hands of slumber. Since Vilciel, he had been overly aware of this, and by now he had willed himself to turn back…to return to his body and wake to his earthly existence for at least another day. He could not die before returning to Sheng Fan. He would not allow it.

The thought was defiance against the Master. But was it not the Jade Emperor who had bestowed knowledge upon him, even above others? To be guided in astralmancy was to be given access to aspects of heaven. Only the Jade Emperor could pass such awareness to a man.

“But you turned from the path,” someone said to Xu Liang. “You denied teaching, and carved a path of your own. You must wonder now whether it was a path to ruin.”

Xu Liang looked ahead, to a pair of red doors set in a stone frame, flanked at either side by statues of lions. The beasts had their clawed hands resting protectively on large spheres that represented the endless consciousness of the Jade Emperor, with no beginning and no end. The lions themselves were protectors of His wisdom.

Xu Liang stepped toward them, observing the manner in which the flame of his nightmare corridor danced over the amber globes, creating swirling clouds of color. His gaze was then drawn to the stone relief above the door, where images of clouds and spirits were carved, all of them flowing toward the calmly seated depiction of the Jade Emperor at its center.

The Temple of Divine Tranquility…the Jade Hall. Its presence here seemed almost a mockery, but he knew that it was a form of portents.

“You are not easily led astray, even by your own logic.”

A man appeared on the wide steps fronting the door. His robes were predominantly green with embroidery of eagles and peonies, the beast spirit who perched upon the arm of the Jade Emperor, a messenger between Him and His servant Cheng Yu…and the flower created for His beloved daughter Mei Qiao. The pattern was a familiar one among scholars of Sheng Fan, and particularly favored by the mystic Che Wen Tai.

Xu Liang recognized him. His own command over the spirit had once drawn the attention of the Seven Mystics, particularly the most ancient and revered among them. The Supreme Astralmancer had once suggested that Xu Liang might study under him, but Xu Liang had declined, favoring the winds. To become an astralmancer was to begin a labor that would have taken him from the court more frequently than his studies of the outer realms. Instead, he had taken up a private study of only the aspects that came readily to him. He knew that he would never know his true potential in astralmancy, but in aeromancy, he had excelled. It seemed to be the favored choice of his ancestors, one which challenged his mind, body, and spirit, but that served his heart in allowing him to serve the Empire as Imperial Tactician.

It is a selfish journey, that of the heart, lacking sense and reason.

He did wonder at times if he had chosen wrongly.

The ancient mystic, whose silver-white hair flowed both down his back in a braided tail and from his chin in the form of a beard of impressive length, nodded in response to Xu Liang’s thoughts. “A humble child questions,” Che Wen Tai said. “A defiant child boasts assurance.”

Xu Liang bowed respectfully to the elder and his words. He proceeded to wonder whether or not this meeting was entirely memory, or if the astralmancer had projected his spirit upon this plane.

Che Wen Tai gave no indication with his following words. “You have walked the path of a prodigy. The Jade Emperor Himself took the hand of a child of Du and led him to the great palaces of the Empire.”

That was not right. “It is not I who have been guided directly by the Heavens.”

“Could you not have been?” the ancient continued. “Would your ascent be anymore blasphemous than that of the Song? Were they not the opportunists, who seized power from the blood spilled by betrayers of the Mandate?”