Wren the Fox Witch (Europa #3: A Dark Fantasy) (34 page)

She smiled at them and offered a little wave, which the blind woman didn’t notice and the serious woman didn’t acknowledge. Wren followed Omar up to the temple doors.

What a strange city. I’ve never seen anyone like those two ladies before. This is all so exciting!

Preview of
The City of the Gods

Chimera, Book Two

Chapter 1. Asha

Asha stood in the loud, dusty street and looked up at the strange temple made of ancient stone and polished wood, and she wondered how long it would take her to destroy it. The sun hung low in the western sky above Alexandria and the spring breeze grew colder.

“You’re certain this is what you wish to do?” asked Priya.

Asha exhaled slowly and looked at her friend. “Yes.”

The little nun smiled and adjusted the red cloth tied across her eyes, and leaned on her tall staff with its jangling brass rings set into the top. “I admit that this will undoubtedly make the world a better place. These Osirian people are dangerous. Their weapons are unholy. Their acts, unforgivable.”

“I’m glad we still agree.” Asha looked back toward the doors of the temple, which were guarded by half a dozen men in green robes, each wearing two or three belts laden with knives and pistols. As she studied them, she noticed an older gentleman and a very young woman crossing the street and approaching the temple steps.

There was nothing remarkable about the man, but the girl had skin the color of snow and hair the color of blood. She wore a strange rustling dress of black silk with a black scarf tied over the top of her head, and her eyes were hidden by a pair of glasses with blue lenses.

What sort of woman is that? And why is she here?

“I’m not concerned with these Sons of Osiris,” Priya was saying. “And I don’t care about their godless temple. What I do care about is you. You’ve never done anything like this before. This is different from fighting a lone man, or stopping a crime. We’re talking about violence on a much larger scale. You could lose control. I could lose you.”

Asha looked back at the nun. “I won’t let that happen. I promise.”

“I’m going to hold you to that promise,” Priya said. “Jagdish and I will be terribly sad and lonely if you turn into a monster.” The sleepy mongoose poked his whiskers out from behind the curtain of Priya’s flowing black hair as he clung to her shoulder. He squeaked, and then huddled down again against the nun’s neck. “And it doesn’t need to be now. We can wait and see what there is to be seen of this place and what goes on here. Learn more. Think more. Perhaps even find another way, if another way exists.”

“No. No waiting. We crossed an empire to find this place, to stop these men. I don’t want to know more about them. I don’t want to understand them,” Asha said, her gaze shifting back to the pale girl in the black dress on the temple steps. “I don’t want to wait and let them hurt one more innocent person while I stand by, doing nothing.”

That girl. She looks nervous. Why?

The nun touched her shoulder. “It’s all right. I understand.”

“You shouldn’t be here when I do it. It won’t be safe,” Asha said. “I’ll take you back to the hotel.”

“No, I want to be here,” Priya said. “In case you need me.”

“I won’t.”

“Still.” The nun smiled and headed across the street, her staff jingling softly with each step, her long unbound hair festooned with white lotus blossoms fluttering in the cool Aegyptian breeze.

Asha watched her companion move gracefully through the foot traffic and the beasts of burden and the mechanical wagons spewing steam, and the nun reached the shadows of an alley without incident. Then Asha turned back to the Temple of Osiris and she tried to look at it dispassionately, wondering how heavy and thick the stone walls of the lower fortress might be, and how strong the wooden beams of the upper temple might be.

How much power will it take to destroy something like this?

How much strength?

How much of the dragon?

There was no way to know, and no way to guess. But it had to be done.

All of it then.

She glanced one last time at the doors of the temple where the Aegyptian man and the strange girl in black were speaking to the guards.

I wonder. Could she be one of them? She doesn’t look anything like them. Could she be a prisoner? A slave? Probably. Well, she won’t be for much longer.

Asha closed her eyes, and exhaled slowly, preparing for the dragon. She had so many memories to choose from. The doctor who tortured the people of India and Rajasthan, the foolish parents who neglected their children, the spouses who beat each other, the landowners who reduced their workers to starving slaves, the murderers, the thieves, and on and on. She kept a vast gallery of human monsters and atrocities in the back of her mind, each one fresh and bright and hideous, each one able to inspire some degree of rage in her heart.

But now, she reached all the way back to the first evil, the very first vision of hateful cruelty in her mind. It was the image of a beautiful young boy lying on a table, his chest carefully opened and his blood dripping slowly on the floor. The surgical knives were arrayed nearby with the wires and lenses and powders and razors. The doctors were coming toward her, leaving the room, leaving the boy alone on the table, his face still contorted in his final moments of agony.

She had asked them,
Why didn’t you save him?

And they had answered,
Because we didn’t want to.

Asha felt her skin burning and her heart pounding and her brains searing as the tears welled up in the corners of her eyes. She curled her hands into fists and clenched her teeth as her lips rippled in a silent snarl.

The dragon awoke.

The soul of the great golden dragon, which slept somewhere deep down within her own fragile spirit and flesh, opened its ruby eyes and opened its golden maw, and from within her own heart, the beast roared.

Asha opened her eyes and saw the change begin. Her smooth brown skin rippled with golden scales that shone in the late day sun. Her fingertips grew longer and thinner, becoming deadly ruby claws. She felt the warm pulses running down her skin as she traded her human flesh for dragon armor. Her spine throbbed as her slender whip of a tail erupted from her back and began to roll and lash the dusty ground behind her, tossing her pale yellow sari left and right.

All around her, men and women cried out in fear and surprise and she could sense them running away. Horses and zebras whickered and screamed before racing down the road. A nearby sivathera, a spotted giant with enormous antlers drawing a stately little coach, reared up on its hind legs, bellowing and snorting, and it too thundered off down the street.

Yes, run away. Run away, all of you. And keep running.

A terrible heat rose in her chest, scorching her throat as she exhaled, and she saw the air around her nostrils shimmering like a watery mirage on the horizon. Asha pressed her hands to her forehead, knowing what would come next, but still afraid. She’d never let it go this far before.

From her temples where the golden scales met her thick black hair, two small mounds rose, and rose, and went on rising. The dragon’s horns were round and smooth, and branched above her head like antlers before tightening into ruby-tipped points.

Asha straightened up and stretched her back and arms, feeling the weight of her golden armor and the power in her legs. Her horned skull weighed heavily on her neck, and her lashing tail tugged her hips left and right. It was all awkward and new, all so much stranger than just the scales and claws that she usually released, but now with the dragon itself awake and raging within her breast, the strangeness felt natural and right.

She looked up at the temple again as a crimson veil passed over her eyes. The world became a flat landscape of dark reds and light reds, punctuated by the sharp white figures of men and women and animals.

But through it all, she held on to the image of the boy on the table, and the doctors who had laughed as they walked away from his dead body, and hadn’t cared whether the boy had lived or died.

He was mine. My first.

They killed him.

And I… I watched them do it.

Asha dashed forward, ignoring the cries of the people and beasts all around her, and she sank her claws into the stone wall of the temple. The ancient blocks cracked apart and when she yanked her claws out the entire corner of the temple crashed down into the road, hurling up a massive cloud of dust that swallowed the street and everyone in it.

She surged forward again and leapt high onto the side of the temple, and then leapt again all the way up to the top of the stone fortress where the grand wooden pagoda began. She had seen such buildings before in Ming, and while it did strike her as wholly out of place in this western city, it held no other fascination for her. Ashe smashed the wooden columns, and the beams, and the panels, and the planks. She ran around and around, and climbed higher and higher, tearing and breaking and rending everything in reach. From time to time she saw the flash of a frightened face or the bright light of a drawn seireiken, but they were all as slow as insects trapped in amber. She raced by them all, her mind bent only on the next thing she could drive her ruby claws into and tear to pieces.

Somewhere deep inside the temple, surrounded by splintered beams and collapsing walls, Asha stopped. The entire building was keening and moaning and creaking.

It’s dying. This place is dying. Soon it will fall and take all of its vermin with it. All of the killers and slave drivers. They’ll all be dead soon.

Asha ran back toward the outer wall, her tail lashing at the remains of the walls, her claws shredding everything within reach. She burst through the last wall and leapt out into the cool evening air high above the city street, and fell. She crashed down onto the stone lip at the top of the lower fortress, and then slid down the sloping wall, smashing out the ancient blocks as she descended toward the street.

By the time her feet touched the ground, Asha was exhausted. Her arms and legs were aching, and her back was throbbing from the constant writhing of her tail. As she straightened up, she saw through the swirling clouds of dust to the slender white outline of a woman with the smaller white shape of a mongoose on her shoulder in the alley across the street.

Priya.

The memory of the dead youth faded, and Asha lost her grip on the anger and the hate. She was tired, and suddenly she realized that she didn’t want to be there anymore, not in that city, not even in that part of world. Destroying the temple seemed petty and pointless.

It’s just a building. They can always build another.

The dragon raged on, and she could feel it wanting to destroy and devour, to lash out at the world and indulge in every little whim of her flesh. Asha blinked.

I take refuge in life.

I take refuge in the forests and the rivers, the mountains and the seas, and the deserts.

I take refuge in the trees and deer and the tigers and the eagles.

I am not a dragon.

I am Asha.

She blinked and the reds and whites were gone, and her skin was her own again. The world was brown and gray and blue, and everything was moving so fast. People were running and animals were bolting, wagons and carts were overturning, and chunks of wood and stone were falling from the sky.

“Asha!”

She blinked again. Priya was yelling at her.

“Asha!”

She looked up at the temple and her heart nearly stopped. The entire wooden pagoda, all five stories of it, was toppling forward in her direction, its walls and roofs cracking apart as the entire structure collapsed. Asha ran.

She crossed the road in a flash of yellow and black, wrapped her arms around Priya, and carried the blind nun down the alley away from the collapsing temple. When the dust cloud caught up to them, Asha knelt down, wrapping her arms around Priya’s head.

I’m so stupid. What was I thinking? She shouldn’t have been here. She could have died. And then what would I…

The dust blew past them and Asha felt a few small splinters patter on her back and a few small pebbles rolled past her feet. When the noise died down, Asha looked up. As the dust cloud thinned away, she saw a ragged shape emerge into the last red rays of the setting sun. The pagoda was gone. Bits and pieces of it lay atop the rubble, but nothing larger than a man’s leg. The fortress had collapsed on two sides, falling in upon itself and then spilling out into the road.

I did that?

She looked down at Priya. “It’s over. Are you all right?”

“I think so,” the nun said. She opened her arms and revealed the huddled furry ball of Jagdish. “I think we’re both just fine. Was anyone else hurt?”

Asha looked back at the devastation of the street.

My gods. Why didn’t I wait? Just an hour or two. Just until sunset, when everyone would be home, out of the road, out of danger.

“Stay here. I’m going to see if anyone needs help.”

Asha headed back down the alley and stepped out into the shadowed devastation. There were sounds everywhere. She heard the soft crackling of falling rocks, the grunts and cries of frightened animals, and the coughing of weary and battered people.

“Is anyone hurt?” she called out. “I’m an herbalist. Is anyone hurt?” She stood still for a moment, listening, trying to peer through the last traces of the dust. She wondered if her accent was making her Eranian difficult for the Aegyptians to understand her. “Anyone?”

Someone cried out. A woman, young and weak. She was speaking, but Asha couldn’t understand the language at all. She hurried over the rubble, nearly twisting her ankle twice, and found the young woman lying on the ground, half-covered in small bits of wood and stone, and lots of dust. But through the debris, Asha could see the young woman’s black dress and red hair.