The Pirate Empress (77 page)

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

The Lady Dai

“The promise is broken,” a voice said. The tone was feminine, musical. Li was jolted from her examination of the silk painting overtop the coffin, and when she saw the nature of the speaker, she lost all ability to reply.

“Lady,” Yongfang said, and bowed. Li woke herself out of her spell and bowed also.

The woman who stood before them was dressed in multiple layers of silk and linen clothing. Horizontal silk straps bound the garments in place. Clearly this was her funerary trousseau. Had she not made it across the Golden Bridge to Heaven or had she been rejected? She lifted a dainty arm; the sleeve that draped it was so sheer it reminded Li of a cicada’s wing. She was quite beautiful, with an oval face, evenly rounded features and prominent cheekbones. Adorning her glossy black hair were tiny wooden flowers that framed her face. As she lowered her head to express her disapproval at the disturbance of her things, Li saw that the back of her hair was twisted and fastened in place with a tortoiseshell comb, plus pins of horn and bamboo.

Li bowed again. “Lady Dai?”

“Yes?” the beauty responded. “What are you doing in my crypt? Have you come to rob me? Have you come to finish the job of the Foxes?” She sat down on the edge of her coffin and sighed. “One moment I was in Heaven, the next I am here. To answer your burning yet unspoken question, young war maiden—for I can see by your garb and weaponry what you are—I do not know whether I am dead or not.”

“Can you leave this place? Can you help me to get out?”

“Obviously, I cannot leave. Why would I want to be here? What good are luxuries in an eternity underground? As for you, how can I help you to get out when I can’t leave myself?”

“The world is in peril,” Li said. She shot a glance at the ceiling. “Up there lies the beginning and end of all things.”

“I know. Dahlia is alive and stirring. It is her fault that I am here. The world is upside down. And now there is no Heaven and no Hell. As I said, the promise is broken.”

“What if I pledge to return you to Heaven. Will you help me then?”

“I have no powers, War Maiden. But if I did, I would surely help you.”

Li studied the vaulted ceiling. She was at wits end: so close and yet so impossibly far. Master Yun stood just above her head, as did the Fox Queen. “There must be some way we can drill our way up there.” Up there, lay fifty feet of red earth, four feet of white clay, and two feet of charcoal. They had no magic that could plough through that.

“Yongfang,” Li said, turning to the ghost soldier, “Since you can leave, you must go and help Master Yun.”

“Where did you get that idea? I am as trapped in this vault as you are. I was only able to leave First Emperor’s tomb—the crypt where I was buried—because of his release. Only through
that
mound may I come and go.”

A thought struck Li. When Master Yun was rescued from the tomb earlier, the blue dragon had transformed into a Qin soldier and the gate to the mound had obeyed him. The secret of the gate must have something to do with the dragon itself!

All this time as they conversed the black eyes of Lady Dai watched them. “She is not trustworthy,” Yongfang whispered into Li’s ear. “She can’t leave unless someone remains to take her place. And clearly, she wishes to leave. Since I am already dead, it cannot be me.”

“I gave her my pledge,” Li said, “and abide by it. Why should she wish to harm me? If I can find my way out of here, I will be her saviour. Heaven is hers as I promised.”

“How do you know she speaks the truth? How do you know that that is where she came from? Maybe she never left this world. If you ask me, she is no goddess.”

Li meant to answer when something heavy hit her on the head. Her eyes swam and her last conscious images were of the bloodstained, wooden servant figurine tumbling to the floor.

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The foothills and the mountains rolled upward to heaven and Quan knew he was beat. He returned to the black dragon and saw that it held its ghostly captives in the wall. The spectre of First Emperor Qin and the majority of the Night Guards Army remained at large. And so, Quan bid the dragon farewell, found his horse and what stragglers of his battle-torn troop survived and sped away, abandoning the hopping corpses to their blood feast. At least he’d see no trouble from them for a while, but his futile attempt to catch the fox faerie had cost him dearly. If the ghost soldiers and
Yaoquai
regrouped, Master Yun could be in trouble, placing the Crosshairs in jeopardy.

From a distance of untold miles he discerned the hills of dust and the sharp, black circle of the Fox Queen’s regiments. Fighting took place on the fringes of the artifice in massive armed units. From all directions, Quan sighted the legions they had lured away returning to thicken her forces. A huge winged beast wheeled high over the center of the device, and Quan knew something desperate was in the works. “Quickly,” he ordered his men.

They stormed over the hillocks and down the other side, galloped across the plain, shouting and shooting their crossbows as they clashed with the first line of defense. He rejoiced to see that Altan and his Mongols were present with their C-bows and that the Jian and their riders no longer muddied the skies. They fought hand to fist when their arrows were depleted, using their bows as clubs against the remaining Tao Tie. When the skirmish looked secure, Quan signalled to the warlord that he was moving his troop south to offset the rampaging ghost army. When he reached the third hillock on the far side of the Circle, Quan raised a hand to stop his men. Something was wrong. Atop First Emperor’s mound there was no sign of life. At the base of the mound, a battle for possession of the tomb was taking place. The ghost of Emperor Qin himself led a line of fifty thousand men, and opposing him was Captain Huang and ten thousand soldiers. Quan had about five hundred left to his troop. If he didn’t think of something fast, the mound was lost.

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This time it wasn’t the tart smell of the sea wafting into Admiral Fong’s crate that awakened her, although she was surely confined in a box. She felt the river softness of silk and her nostrils scented sweet reeds and spice. The ceiling was three inches from her face and she sprawled flat on her back in the dark. Outside was complete silence. The instant knowledge of where she was sent fear straight to her heart. The lady Dai had put her inside her own coffin!

Li felt the back of her head. It was sticky with blood, and a huge lump was forming. Her shoulder where she had been struck by the dart in the battle against the Xiongnu also ached. No time to think about pain. She had experienced much worse. Before she lost consciousness, Lady Dai had been eyeing the fifth rib of Dilong. She knew something about the dragon’s bone that Li and Yongfang did not. Was it able to unlock the noblewoman’s tomb after all?

“Yongfang!” she screamed.

Had they escaped? Surely, the ghost soldier would not abandon her to an ignoble death?

Li drew a dagger from her sash. Could she cut her way out of here? This coffin was made of solid wood, lacquered to a hard finish. A dagger was not a saw. A thought occurred to her. How was it sealed? She pushed on the lid and, as she expected, it firmly resisted. She needed some light. Would
Gwei-huo
find a way to her even inside this box? She willed them to come and they appeared in a spangle of dancing lights. The interior of the coffin was just as she’d thought—lined with silk. Something underneath her poked into her shoulder blades and she shifted to remove it with one hand. An inventory, inked in black, on strips of chopstick-like bamboo, folded like a book. It listed all of the items in the tomb including food consisting of dried beef, venison and duck, and medicinal items comprising soybean seeds and water chestnuts. Hungry though she was, none of this was helpful.

On the back of the book was a sketch of the tomb itself. The location of all of the grave goods was depicted as well as a detailed drawing of the lady’s tomb. Li studied the diagram. The sides and lid were built of pinewood, and while the wood of the pine tree was softer than many woods, it was unbreakable without tremendous force. Lying flat on her back with no room to move easily made that impossible. But here was something useful. The lid was sealed with glue composed of glutinous rice. When rice was dried, it became rigid, hard as stone. But it could be melted.

As a pirate, Li had relied mostly on her martial arts abilities and her skill with a blade. Fear had prevented her from testing the unknown. Once, she had drawn fire from lightning, and often she had summoned the Ghostfire to cloak her, and thrice she had called upon the water god’s aid. Was this a matter of life and death and was she willing to pay the price a fourth time? Memory failed her now as she tried to recall what her last wish had cost her, or even what her last wish was. Not good. She needed her wits about her, and if the price of god-calling was the loss of her mind, then the price was too high.

She had the gift of geomancy like her grandfather. She needed heat to melt the glue without incinerating herself. Dare she try a geomantic shield? A geomantic shield would protect her from the fire if she called up a magma surge.

She had to try. She closed her eyes and willed it to happen. The earth opened up beneath her and the heat began to crack the walls of her prison. 

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Just as Quan felt the seeds of despair, Yongfang appeared atop the mound. “The children are safe,” he boomed. “Look above your head.”

In the sky, Quan spotted Wu and Peng on the back of
Fenghuan
g. The phoenix circled low enough so that Quan could bellow to his son to stay aboard her. They must reclaim the mound. Quan surveyed their location. All around him, battle raged. What was the ghost emperor’s plan? To destroy the mound? How did he mean to do that? Did he possess some kind of weapon that Quan was not privy to? He knew First Emperor’s greatest desire was to eradicate his prison so that he would never be forced to return.

The Ming Empire was failing. Quan had few resources left. He looked westward to where a wide-open space glared suspiciously amongst the fury of fighting. That space he knew was not empty. It held his reserve of five thousand special soldiers. But were they a match for a ghost army? His general, Ren Xiong, seemed to know what was asked of him before Quan even signalled with his red flag. The Yeren understood that, this time, their foe was immutable. They couldn’t attack the enemy as though they were men subject to fear, and therefore killable. These warriors knew no fear and were already dead. Quan had devised no tactic for them to execute. Their strategy would have to be their own.

The
crunch, crunch, crunch
began, as the Yeren assembled into position. They remained invisible, but their footsteps sounded a line that became an arc with which to envelope the crescent of ghost soldiers battling at the foot of the mound. As Quan began to raise the black flag—the signal to attack, Yongfang suddenly materialized at his side.

“They have planted an incendiary device at the back of the mound. You must stop them from igniting it.”

“I am trying to do just that,” Quan said. “Step back so I can signal my army to charge.”

“The device. It must not explode. The backdraft from the blast will send flames down the tunnels, igniting the noxious fumes of the long dead and creating an explosion that will tip the world on its head. Li is trapped underground.”

“What? I sent her after the White Tiger. She has failed then. All is lost without the Crosshairs of the Four Winds. What was her plan? Why did she descend underground?”

Yongfang replied, “Her hope was to emerge from her subterranean path into the focus of Dahlia’s Magic Circle. Unfortunately, we encountered the owner of the tomb that sits below that axis. She knows something of magic dragon bones, and in my struggle to restrain her I was exhumed with her out of her crypt, and somehow deposited on Emperor Qin’s mound. Now that she is freed, the Lady Dai is very confused. She sits upon the mound and watches the bloodshed.”

“And what of Li. How can we help her? How will we get her out?”

“I’m afraid she is on her own now, Brigade General.”

Quan shook his head in growing despair and utter disbelief.
My Li, my beauteous, courageous and stalwart Li, I have failed you again.
He raised the black flag and then the red one to signal the troop to move south, behind the mound.

Destroy all encountered. Take no prisoners.

Quan mounted his horse and spurred it to follow the footfalls of the invisible warriors. If Captain Huang could keep the battle engaged at the north-facing side of the mound, then he and the Yeren would do the rest.

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For days, the warship floundered at the mouth of the delta, waiting for the tide, but the tide refused to cooperate. As far as Admiral Fong knew, weeks had passed and he languished where he was. Stuck. He was grounded and the current eschewed all of the rules of the tide. The moon changed from crescent to half cup, and still, the sea lay quiet.

Young Lao peered over the rail with Lin, staring at the shoreline. If the sea ebbed any further, the entire delta would become land. Lao pointed to a strange occurrence below the ship’s keel. They had ploughed into five feet of silt. “Something moves in the channel,” Lao said. “But that isn’t river water. Why does it move, Lin?”