The Way of Things: Upper Kingdom Boxed Set: Books 1, 2 and 3 in the Tails of the Upper Kingdom (125 page)

“These are dangerous days,
Lord,” said Long-Swift. “We have had runners from Lon-Gaar and runners from the
mining town of Cohdhun. We have had runners from the trading post of Gaar’Uurt
and runners all the way from Lake Zhu. It is hearsay, Lord, all rumour and
riddle. I cannot properly advise you without facts.”

“I have the Oracle to advise me,
Long-Swift.”

“Then you will not miss me.”

The Needle cackled like a crow.

He fears the Storm and hates
the Needle,
echoed their voices inside his head.
He will be Khan when
you are dead.

The Bear eyed him over the mug
of khava.

“Long-Swift?”

“I live to serve the Khan of
Khans, who is and always has been, closer than my brother.”

Lover of the Lover of Lions,
whispered
the voice
. But the Lover of Lions is ours.

And the Needle held up the
golden eye. He cackled again.

The Bear released a long breath,
adjusted his position on the ground.

“We will be at the Field of One
Hundred Stones in two days. I will expect you there with facts. To advise me.”

“Lord.”

“And Long-Swift?”

“Lord?”

“Do not kill the lion. I do not
wish you to be my rival just yet.”

“I will only run, Lord.”

“Then run now.”

And Swift Sumalbayar slipped out
of the gar of the Khan of Khans, turned his face to the south and began to run.

***

It smelled bad in here,
Kerris thought as he debated the necessity of waking. Very bad, as if someone
had both eaten and defecated in the same room. Repeatedly. Honestly, he
thought. People were worse than animals when it came to this. Horses wouldn’t
do that even if stabled for days, but then again, horses were strong-willed and
fierce. Not even Kirin could touch the discipline of a horse.

But he was hungry and usually
friendly, so on the urgings of his belly, he pushed himself up to his hands and
knees and opened his eyes.

It was another compound.

He sighed as it all came
back. His memory had never been the best and he realized it was often a
blessing. Probably as close to NirVannah as he would ever come, that sweet
blissful state of nothingness and peace. He only ever found that in a bottle of
sakeh or his wife’s arms. This foul-smelling, filthy, beast-ridden compound,
this was neither.

But it was different. Above
him, was the sky, blue as blue could be. Odd, he thought. It didn’t smell like
blue sky but there it was for his eyes to see. There was rock under his palms,
not sand and he could see trees, ferns, even mountains in the distance and it
was very beautiful but wrong. Clouds moved overhead but there was no breeze. He
wished he had the stones from his pocket. They would tell him what was wrong.
They would speak.

Nothing in this compound was
speaking.

He rose to his feet,
stretched and yawned, wincing as the fresh scrape across his chest tugged with
the motion. Still naked but something odd at his neck. He reached up with a
hand, ran his fingers along a thin strip of metal around his throat, like a
pendant or a collar. He tugged at it, found a clasp and tried to remove it but
it buzzed with heat so he decided to leave it alone. He shook his head. At
least, there weren’t other prisoners here and once again, he thought of his
wife, wondered where she could be and if she was well. He hoped so. The thought
of a life without her voice was empty and sad.

Something was whispering.

He looked down to see a large
rock at his feet. It was an odd shape, this rock and possibly not natural but
it was talking, whimpering, pleading for him to pick up.

He glanced around. There was
no one here. Nothing. Usually, stones did not speak to him. He and earth were
mortal enemies.

Still it whispered so he
reached down and the moment his fingertips touched its hard surface, he saw
blood, heard screams in his mind. He snatched his hand away, took several steps
back. No, this place was unnaturally still and he looked up at the sky again.
Blue and white. Happy clouds, without a trace of water, wind or lightning.

He looked now to the trees,
their branches waving in the breeze that was not there, to the ferns nestled at
their trunks. He began to move towards them, walking at first but quickly
breaking into a run when he realized that they were not coming any closer. They
stayed the same size and shape on the near horizon and he broke into a sweat
now and he ran as fast as he could, and suddenly, he struck metal and bronze
and the faces of Ancestors pressed up against a wall as he hit. He was thrown
onto his back and lay there, dazed and staring up at blue skies and fluffy
white clouds sailing by on a breeze that was not there.

He could have sworn he heard
laughter but his face was throbbing and his ears ringing and the smell of blood
and rotting meat was overpowering. A large shape was moving in the corner of
his vision.

He wanted his sword.

He wanted the katanah.

He closed his eyes and
called.

***

“You are sure?” asked the Seer.

“Yes, yes, why not,” grumbled
the grey lion.

“You don’t sound sure,” said
Fallon.

“Well, I’m not, am I?” said
Kerris. “But there’s no going back and this might be helpful in the future if I
can learn to control the earth the way I control the lightning.”

“You
can
control it,”
said the Seer. “You simply need the will.”

“Oh, you sound like Kirin. I’m
always lacking something.”

“Kerris…” said Fallon.

“Right. Sorry. Instruct away,
sidalord
Seer.”

“I told you I could train you,”
said the Seer. “There could be worse places to live than
Sha’Hadin.”

“You
are
a persistent old
bugger, aren’t you?” Kerris grinned. “Will there be room enough for our kittens?”

“Six grey striped kittens,” sang
Fallon, and she raised Kylan high into the air. “Two down, four to go. All your
little cousins! Wheee!”

“More than enough room,” said
Sireth with a smile. “The brothers would find it a delight to hear the voices
of children.”

They were sitting in a circle,
facing each other and surrounded by the Army of Blood. It was mid-morning, the
sky was bright blue, the air very cold and both monkeys and cats lay curled up
with their horses. They had halted soon after crossing a bridge of Ancestral
stone and the army needed a rest. The trail through the mountains had been very
narrow and it had taken the better part of two days simply to cross the bridge.
There was a campsite on the other side and a firepit with burnt skeletons of a
horse and ten dogs and they knew something terrible had happened. But there was
no room for six thousand soldiers and seven thousand horses, so they had
continued on past the campsite up, up and up to a vast hilly plateau beyond.

Fallon lowered the baby onto a
skin by the fire. He rolled and cooed and she stroked his dark wavy head.

“I think I have a plan,” she
said. “For the army. For when we meet the Khan.”

“You are so clever,” said
Kerris. “Have I ever told you that?”

“Never,” she grinned. “But
you’re stalling.”

“Too clever.”

The Seer presented his hands.
“Shall we?”

The Geomancer sighed and took
them. “We shall.”

And they closed their eyes as
small stones began to rise from the ground.

***

“Wait,” said Jeffery Solomon
and he paused, raising a hand up to the wire at the back of his skull. He was
in yet another long, featureless corridor, being accompanied to a ‘guest unit’
at the direction of Celine Carr. When he stopped, the two guards with him
stopped as well, hoisting their Dazzler weapons a little higher in their arms.

“Right, got it,” said
Solomon, and he turned to the guards.

“Damaris Ward has asked me to
look at your MAIDEN field,” he lied. “It’s full of holes and not working
properly. We had the same problem in Switzerland but there’s an easy way to
compensate for it. Where’s the generator?”

They looked at him.

“Guys,” he said. “I’m
Supervisor 7 of SleepLab 1. If anyone can fix it, I can.”

They looked at each other.

“Call Jiān Ward, then.
She’ll tell you.”

One of the guards shook his
head.

“Unnecessary. This way,
Super7.”

And they set off along the
featureless corridor in the direction of the MAIDEN field generator.

***

Bo Fujihara lifted his pipe to
his lips, took a few good long puffs. Of all the items he had packed, he had
been certain to bring enough tobacco. The way the cats felt about tea, he felt
about tobacco. It helped him think, calmed him and brought him balance. And
life was all about balance.

He looked over the wide plateau.
To the south, the peaks were dark and imposing, but grew distant and blue to
the east and west. They wavered in the thin morning light like a mirage and he
wondered if this was the plateau of
Chi’bett.
If so, they would likely
be close to
Lha’Lhasa
, the very westernmost reach of the Eastern
Kingdom. He wondered if he were able to send some of the Snow through this
territory for reinforcements. It would be a good strategy to catch the Khan’s
massive army between two smaller forces.

He shook his head. He was
thinking like a soldier, not a diplomat. This was a mission of peace.

The cats were meditating and
pebbles were circling around their joined hands. They were a miraculous people,
he realized, a beautiful people, and he was glad he was on this journey with
them.

He slid his eyes to the woman
standing at his side. Her long marbled tail was lashing and he could hear a
quiet growl from deep in her throat. Of all the cats, Major Ursa Laenskaya
confused him the most. Apparently she was married to the Seer but Bo couldn’t
see it. She rarely spent time with him and when she did, the tension was raw,
the hostility evident. Perhaps they needed another wife.
Chi’Chen
households frequently had two wives, sometimes three if the man could afford
it. Emperor Hiro Watanabe had four. It seemed to work well for his people but
then again, marriage to one wife seemed to work well for Kaidan.
 

“You do not approve, Major?” he
asked.

“This is wrong,” she growled.

“What is? Meditation?”

“Peace with dogs.”

“You do not believe we should
unite?”

“I do not believe all the
stories. Even if Ancestors are rising, they can be beaten by feline steel and
feline will. Peace with dogs is not worth the price.”

“Your husband does not agree.”

“My husband is the most powerful
man in the Upper Kingdom. He could destroy the army of the Khan with a thought
and yet he restrains his power to teach the grey coat and he restrains
me
to save the jaguar.”

“But if he teaches the grey coat
and saves the jaguar, then there will be three very powerful men in the Upper
Kingdom.”

“You know nothing of dogs,” she
growled.

The ambassador smiled.

“It is easier for a khamel to go
through the eye of a needle than a proud man to enter the gates of NirVannah,”
he said, repeating her husband’s line from days ago. “But I wonder, are there
any proverbs about a proud woman?”

She snorted but said nothing.

He smiled again and slipped the
pipe between his teeth.

***

The ground beneath their boots
began to rumble and Kirin looked over at the Magic, sitting in a circle, eyes
closed, hands clasped together. Yahn Nevye, student of Jet barraDunne, betrayed
them into the hands of Sherah al Shiva,
ninjah
and
kunoi’chi
.
Gave them over to the 112
^th
Legion, the people of Jalair
Naransetseg. It was an unholy trinity sitting there, causing the earth to shake
beneath his boots and it suddenly occurred to him that his only other companion
was a dog.

The rumble became a roar and the
horses began to stomp and suddenly, a mound appeared by the Magic and a massive
pillar of stone began to emerge from the earth. His hand slid to the hilt of
the Blood Fang as he staggered back and back again, watching with disbelief as
the pillar rose out of the earth like a massive cobra from a basket. The ground
was shaking and the roar was accompanied by a grinding sound, like great wheels
moving together. At its base, the Magic still sat, heads down as small stones
rained down upon them and a cloud of dust rose up, choking their breath but
they did not move from their place and the tower grew higher and higher.
Finally, it ground to a stop, casting a long shadow and towering over the plain
like a beacon

The Magic struggled to stand and
they all shaded their eyes to study the massive structure they had helped
produce. It was smooth and grey with rounded corners and was easily the height
of ten men.

“Eye of the Needle,” said Yahn
Nevye.

The Alchemist looked at him.

“Eye of the Needle, Eye of the
Storm,” he repeated and he stepped forward, slapping his palm on the face of
the pillar. The touch was like the force of an explosion, producing a boom that
flung them to the ground once again and a second cloud of dust and pebbles fell
like rain.

Kirin staggered to his feet.

“Why did you do that?” he
shouted. “Why?”

“I don’t know!” coughed the
jaguar. “Honestly, I don’t…”

“Yu?”
asked Naranbataar
as he studied the pillar. “
En yu wei?”