Shallows of Night - 02 (26 page)

To their right the sky was pearled lavender, the sun still but a ghost ascending behind the morning’s thick haze. To the north and west it was not yet light.

Their lumas snorted and stamped at the earth, eager to be galloping before the wind again. Sha’angh’sei was a sprawl at their backs, a dirty smudge stretching, entangled, to the sea.

They were on a hill burned brown by the sun which overlooked the wide snaking river whose mouth Ronin had glimpsed when first he sailed into port aboard Rikkagin T’ien’s ship. It was deep, turbulent in spots, quiet and sluggish in others. It ran out from the edge of the city at seaside almost due north. The Makkon was following its path and they it.

“What is it?” asked Ronin.

She turned to look at him, her long hair trailing across her face.

“The autumn wind is blowing,” she said.

He felt strong gusts, chill and damp, plucking at their cloaks, shivering the lines of tall slender pines. “What of it?”

There was a curious cast to her face caused perhaps by the oblique light.

“It is,” she said softly, “the season of high summer.”

“You are going after it and I am coming with you.”

He was about to say no but he saw across her visage the play of stormy emotions. She was beyond weeping, her face a white mask of hatred.

“I want to tell you something—” His chest hurt as if he had been struck down.

“There is no need.” The sound of bitter tears, the clash of gleaming metal.

“I do not understand. You cannot know—”

“I can and I do.” She turned to the window, the budding light strange and spectral still. “Matsu was more than sister to me. More than daughter.”

“What then?”

“If I told you, you would think me mad.”

They sped through the new day, the light quickening around them like molten metal, the winds of autumn whipping at their cloaks. Kiri’s unbound hair swept behind her like the tail of some mythical creature, half animal, half human.

Over the bleak countryside they raced, past the long level fields of marshy plants in precise rows down which myriad kubaru women and men in wide-brimmed straw hats, skirts gathered and tied about their waists, waded, bent almost double as they plucked the raw rice. Along the shooting waters of the river as it sliced ever northward toward the death and destruction of the war, its banks wide and brown with mud and silt, precious minerals thrown up to nourish the far-flung fields.

After the Makkon they flew and Ronin, glancing at Kiri, the noble profile with its firm nose and high cheekbones, failed to notice the movement behind them, as a pursuing luma kept pace with them.

By midday the land had swallowed them and all vestiges of civilization, all habitation and settlement, seemed a thing of the past. The remnants of the alluvial delta which was the source of much of Sha’angh’sei’s material wealth had long since dropped away. The terrain became increasingly dry and rocky, undulating in ever higher waves, like a storm-tossed ocean.

There was little vegetation now. Brown and green plants, scraggy and deformed, grew here and there among the chunky rocks, hanging on tenaciously for whatever nourishment they could find. The earth was drier and coarser and ran before them in a gentle incline, rising higher the farther they got from the sea.

Once, to the east, they spied a long line of soldiers marching northward, a supply train of horses to the rear, horsemen to the front, kicking up long plumes of dust. They spurred their mounts onward and soon left the column far behind.

Sun still shone to the south but overhead and to the north billowing gray clouds were roiling.

“Tell me now what Du-Sing wished from you.”

Ronin shrugged. “He wanted something that I could not give him. I know nothing of the sakura.”

“And what of the man in the alley?”

“He had been struck by Greens, perhaps four of them, maybe more. I went to his aid.”

“What did he look like?”

His head came around and he thought, Ah.

“Now why would you ask that?”

“It is a natural question.”

He shook his head. “Not really.”

She smiled. “All right. I have a reason. Will you tell me now?”

He contemplated her for a moment, watching her hair brush her cheeks. It reminded him of Matsu. Her hair would—

“He—did not look like the Sha’angh’sei people and he did not look like my people. But it was difficult to see because of the light—”

“His skin was yellow?”

“Yes.”

“And his face?”

“Black eyes. High cheekbones.”

“Let me see the chain.” She took it, saw the silver blossom.

“Bujun.” Her breath an explosive sound.

“The Green, T’ung, mentioned that word and would have gone on but Du-Sing cut him off.”

“Yes, I imagine he would.” She gave the necklace back to him. “The Bujun are the lost race of man, purportedly the greatest warriors and the elite magi during the ages when sorcerous elements formed the primal elements on the world. The sakura is their symbol. It is a flower which is said to grow only on their isle.”

“What happened to them?”

“No one knows if they actually exist. The stories of the Bujun dropped away sometime during the sorcerous wars. Perhaps Ama-no-mori was destroyed—”

Ronin started.

“Their island is called Ama-no-mori?”

“The floating kingdom, yes.”

“Kiri, the scroll I possess is written in the hand of dor-Sefrith, the most powerful magus of Ama-no-mori.”

“Who told you this?”

“A Magic Man from the Freehold. He had been studying ancient codices which told of the scroll. It was confirmed later by a man I met in the City of Ten Thousand Paths, Bonneduce the Last. Dor-Sefrith is Bujun, there is no doubt.”

“Then
the
man in the alley was Bujun also. They still live!” Her violet eyes flashed. “No wonder Du-Sing was so anxious to learn of your involvement. The presence of Bujun in Sha’angh’sei indicates that their interest in the continent of man will cause the balance of power to change. He wishes the Ching Pang to stay ahead of the Hung Pang.”

Ronin nodded.

“Yes, at first. Now I believe he has other concerns; the same as ours.”

“What do you mean?”

“Du-Sing could have had me killed at any time, yet he did not. All right, it is obvious that he wanted information from me. But he is a shrewd man and at some point he realized that I knew nothing of the sakura—”

“Why should he believe that?”

“I do not think that he had a choice and he knew it. I told him the truth and he was aware that I would not break. I told him then about the coming of The Dolman. And he knew, Kiri!” He slapped the pommel of his saddle. “The fox knew! You know better than any save Du-Sing himself how extensive his network is. Every caste in Sha’angh’sei is involved with the Ching Pang. He has ten thousand eyes and ears within the city and without. He knows that the war in the north is no longer against the Reds; he understands the rikkagin’s anxiety. They fight that which is non-human. You have already seen the Makkon and what it can do to human life. The traditional lines of enmity which have guided the fates of the Greens and the Reds, and thus Sha’angh’sei itself, have broken at last. The forces of The Dolman have come to the continent of man.”

They had been traveling along a high plateau and this gave now onto a gorge of red rock and dry dust, their lumas leaving a vapor trail drifting high above them as they descended. On the plateau behind them came the sky-blue luma, carrying its slim passenger.

They were well into the gorge now. Far to the right, atop a low bluff beyond the perimeter of the red defile, a last row of green pine trees swayed in the gathering wind. Above them, a flock of gray and brown birds flying high moved swiftly southward before the oncoming clouds. Ronin thought that he could hear them calling to each other in shrill cries of longing, but perhaps it was merely the wind shivering the lonely pines. The desolation of this land lent their presence the symbolic strength of eternal guards at the outpost of man.

They wended their way through the gorge, around huge boulders and stratified shelves of crimson shale until, at length, they found the way rising again onto another plateau.

They reined in and Ronin dismounted, stroking his steed’s long neck as he went around it to look at the tracks. It danced impatiently as he knelt, fingers moving in the dust. Unmistakable. The hoofprints of any lesser creature would have been at least partially obliterated by the wind-swept dust. But the signs of the Makkon’s passage could not be so easily obscured. At least if it wished to leave a deliberate trail.
Thee.
An echo in his mind.
Thee.

“Are we gaining?”

He shrugged. “If it wants us to, then we will.”

He leaped upon his luma and they took off over the plateau, riding easily, giving their mounts their heads so that they galloped full out. The creatures seemed indefatigable, happiest when they pushed themselves to their limit.

“I would choose the place of battle this time,” he called to her over the rushing of the wind and the hard jangle of their riding gear.

“That may not be possible.”

“I know that better than anyone.”

They were aware that the sun was about to set only when the light abruptly began to fade. It had been diffuse for most of the day, gray and vitiated by the thick tumultuous cloud layers that now enveloped all the sky for as far in every direction as they could see.

The land was colorless and shadowless and they had had for some time the peculiar and disquieting sensation of traveling across an endless dreamscape, that they moved not in kilometers but rather in spirit farther and farther from the familiar world of man into the realm of another kind of life that was both more and less than they.

It was dark in the north already when they reached the far edge of the plateau and so rode downward into a vast valley completely engulfed in shadow. They had descended perhaps halfway when Kiri gasped and strained forward in her saddle. She pointed wordlessly ahead.

Below, rushing toward them as they sped over the rubble-strewn slope, was a field of waving flowers, as white as bleached bones. Then the sweet smell flooded over them like a sticky cataract and they were within the meadow.

“Poppies!” Kiri breathed.

The lumas shook their heads and called to each other and they lifted high their legs, careful now because they could not see the earth.

It was a sea through which they plunged, rustling with an infectious insistence, white crests and blue troughs caused by the rippling of the blossoms as the wind swept across their illimitable faces.

At that moment the sun broke through a rent in the clouds at the edge of the sky to the west and the sea was stained a lurid purple. That same singular light illuminated before them a hulking shape, rising up as if from the floor of the ocean, a fearsome, apparition with lambent orange eyes.

Its outline pulsed as it waded heavily toward them, its long arms swinging, the talons cutting dark swaths in the purple sea. The lumas screamed in fear and reared, kicking out their forelegs. Their eyes rolled in their sockets and Kiri yelled to him, “Dismount! Dismount before it throws you!”

Into the waving poppies they dropped, up around their waists, Kiri’s curving sword already out. He waved her back.

“Your blade will hurt it no more than did mine.”

She did not glance at him.

“I must kill it.” Voice like frost as she advanced on the Makkon.

Ronin grabbed her, held her tightly, his face very near hers. She struggled in his embrace.

“Hear me, Kiri. I know how you feel. The Makkon slew my friend. I have fought it before. Mere metal and muscle are useless against it. It is not of this world and therefore not bound by its laws.” Still she stared over his shoulder at the shambling monstrosity coming toward them. “Too many have already lost their lives. G’fand, Sa, then Matsu. You will not be the next.”

Her violet eyes were glowing coals in the dusk as she looked at him at last.

“This is not a time for reason; that has fled for all time.” With an effort she broke away from him but he still stood between her and the Makkon. “I am already half dead,” she cried wildly. “Oblivion will be heaven if I can take that foul thing with me!”

She came at him and he hit her then, swiftly and compactly and without warning, striking her along the jaw. Just a ripple of movement. He caught her as she fell, thinking, At least you will not die, and gently laid her down in the purple poppies. They danced, whispering, above her still form.

“You cannot kill it,” he said sadly. “And you also mean something to me.”

The long sword was a heavy weight around his waist, threatening to pull him to the ocean’s floor, and he turned, watching the stumbling rush of the Makkon as he unbuckled the belt. The sword fell beside Kiri.

The creature screamed as it recognized him and he heard the lumas way behind him calling nervously to each other as he went out to meet it, out from the shallows into the depths of the sighing sea, the strange blossoms caressing his legs, the rich sweet aroma mingled now with the choking stench of the thing.

He came in under the swift sweep of its arms, his gauntleted hand held before him like a shield. He leapt at the last instant so that his balled fist smashed into its cruelly curved beak. The Makkon howled and he thought that his eardrums had burst. They were hot and blood began to leak from them because of the vibrations but he had opened the beak and was fighting now for leverage in order to force the gauntlet down its throat.

The howling increased in intensity and he was forced to close his eyes to the terrible slitted orbs which hung before his face like hateful crescent moons in an inimical alien sky.

But now as he struggled for purchase on the scaly hide, needles of pain shot through him like shards of broken glass and tears welled up in his eyes, coursing down his cheeks. The cold was so profound that his legs were already numb as they attempted to climb the alien musculature. He began to shake with the pain and his resolve weakened. The beak ground down against the gauntlet and unless he kept up the thrusting pressure it would slip out and he would be as good as dead. Slowly and purposefully it had stood there and torn out her throat, ripe flesh that he had kissed and stroked ruptured now and gouting red and bits of it flying in his face, the taste of her blood, salt and sticky with spume like sea water, and what are we anyway but salt and phosphorus and water like the ocean? And the hate burned at his core and its heat glowed and grew as he banked the fire with the images, forcing himself to remember the details, her blood in his mouth in an abrupt spray, and he yelled silently, bringing the killing power together within him, and he reached up with his arm, though the pain still shook him and water was in his eyes, forcing the gauntlet farther inside.