Golden Daughter (37 page)

The corner of Sairu’s mouth twitched. “You like them.”

“I do not.”

“You do.”

“They’re useless hedge-pigs.”

“You like their fluffiness.”

“I am entirely immune to fluffiness.” With great dignity the cat turned his back on her and began grooming. But his ears were back, attentive to her every movement as she made her way across the small chamber, knelt before a trunk, and removed from it various items: a silk bag embroidered with peacocks, a fan of similar design worked in paint, a pair of beaded slippers, an ugly brown robe. Curiosity overcoming him, the cat looked around, frowning. “What are you doing?”

“Never you mind,” said Sairu, tucking these items into her robes. “Tell me, Monster, are you willing to help me again?”

“Ah! Three months of blessed peace brought to an abrupt and brutal end,” said the cat with a sigh. “Command me, slave-driver. But don’t expect too much.”

“I never do,” said she. “I need you to sneak into the dungeons beneath the Crown of the Moon. There is a man there, a man who may know something about my Lady Hariawan.”

“Oh, so we’re still dead-set on protecting her, are we?”

“Naturally. Now pay attention.” Swiftly she explained about Lord Kasemsan and his connection to the Crouching Shadows. “He has not revealed his true purpose in coming to Lunthea Maly. I believe he intended to kill my mistress, even as Tu Domchu did. I want to know why, but he has withstood torture for half a year now and still not spoken.”

“So what do you expect me to do?” demanded the cat. “Purr at him?”

“I want you to find him, and I want you to discover the truth. Use whatever means necessary. I know,” she added, with a significant look, “that you are more than you seem. That you possess powers beyond my understanding. Can you do this?”

The cat twitched an ear. Then with a feline’s natural resistance to commitment he said, “I’ll give it a try. Where will we meet afterwards? Here?”

“No,” said Sairu sadly, petting Dumpling, who was pressed up against her leg. “No, it is too dangerous for me to remain. The Crouching Shadows have likely guessed that I would return to Lunthea Maly, and they will come here.”

“Where then?”

She leaned toward the cat, and he came close enough that she might whisper in his ear: “Lembu Rana.”

He pulled back from her, blinking his wide eyes, his lip curled in a snarl. “The Valley of Suffering? But that . . . that’s a
leper
colony!”

Her face was pale but her jaw was firm. “That is where we will meet.”

The cat shuddered. But then he nodded. “Very well. I’ll do what I can, and I’ll meet you there tonight after sunset. What about you? What will you do until then?”

“I,” said Sairu, withdrawing something from her trunk, “am going to pay a visit to the Besur.”

The lowest order of priests in the Crown of the Moon were devoted to the service of Baiduri, the smallest star ever to boast a shrine or two, who was only visible in the Noorhitam sky for half the year, leaving her priests with little enough to do the other half. Baiduri was nearing the end of her cyclical journey as autumn set in and the months of her winter dormancy approached. Her priests too, were beginning to lose interest in their daily rituals and to look forward to winter when they would lounge about, reading a few holy texts, muttering a few prayers, and otherwise getting in the way of their nobler, busier brethren.

A procession of eleven Baiduri priests made their way up one of the side paths within the Crown of the Moon. Their robes were brown and heavy, and their chants, uninspired. No one paid attention to them. No one liked the priests of Baiduri, and many priests of other orders muttered that they would do more honor to their service if they were made to clean the privies.

Thus no one noticed that the procession was made up of eleven, not ten priests as was the usual. And no one noticed when the smallish priest at the end of the procession broke off from the rest and slipped away into an unfrequented portion of the temple grounds.

Sairu, hidden deep within the priestly garments she had taken from her trunk earlier that morning, slipped behind a gnarled old tree hung so thickly with parasitic vines that it provided a shielding curtain. She had considered the possibilities of this overgrown portion of the Crown of the Moon since glimpsing it the long-ago night of her first visit to the temple. Now she used it to cut right across some of the more thickly populated portions of the temple, for there was more than enough cover for one small girl, even in broad daylight.

Without the glow of the moon, the large stones littering this unpleasant plot were not white but dull gray, blackened in places as though by a great fire. Ducking behind one to avoid the gaze of a passing acolyte, Sairu placed her hand upon the stone, but withdrew it again with a gasp. It burned. Not so hot as to damage her hand, but enough to give her a start. Surprised, she put her palm close to the stone again, feeling the heat emanate out to her skin. It was much warmer than sun-baked. It was as though these stones had been engulfed in a great conflagration only a few days ago and still retained the heat of the blaze.

That was impossible. These ruins had been here for hundreds of years, since long before the Crown of the Moon was built in Hulan’s honor. Sairu took a moment to gaze around the ruins again. And she recalled the image of the great house she had glimpsed in the moonlight all those long nights ago. She wondered what could have burned it to the ground, leaving the rubble still suffering hundreds of years later.

But she had no time to consider such things now. Gathering her robes in both hands, she slipped out from behind the stone and hastened on to the central building, Hulan’s Throne, where the High Priest dwelt in holy opulence.

The Besur, unaware of that which slipped up on him in the shadows, stood in the window of his outer chamber, gazing out across the vast temple grounds but not seeing them. His mind was fixed upon the churning question of the emperor’s dream—the promised reward, the ugliness of the vision described, his own inability to locate it as he dream-walked.

A fellow priest—one who had accompanied him the night before to the emperor’s chamber—stood across the room, shifting awkwardly on his feet. He cleared his throat and said, “Honored Besur?”

“Yes?”

“Could we not, as it were—for the sake of Anwar’s Favored Son—possibly
invent
an interpretation?”

The Besur said nothing.

“I mean,” the priest continued, stuttering at the boldness of his suggestion, “the vision, however disturbing, is probably no more than a fancy conjured up in the Imperial Glory’s magnificent imagination and unlikely to be of any concern to him in another month. Would it not be in his favor to ease his mind now, let him forget it, and move on with our duties?”

There lingered, unspoken between them, the added thought,
While one of us claims the princess, the province, and the place in the palace.

Slowly the Besur turned and fixed his fellow priest with the coldest of stares. “You would consider
lying
to the Imperial Glory of Noorhitam?”

The priest opened his mouth to answer, thought better of it, closed his mouth again with a click of his jaw, and bowed. He bowed his way right out of the room, murmuring retractions, blessings, and other things to which the Besur did not bother to listen as he turned back to his window. He heard the door slide shut, and his mouth turned up in one corner with a grim smile.

It was difficult to remember the time, back in his boyhood—scrubbed fresh by his mother, still damp with soapy water and her tears—when he had first entered his home village’s temple and the service of Hulan. That day had possibly marked the last of his belief in the sacred truth of his nation’s religion. Since then, being a bright, ambitious young man, he had learned different.

He had learned the subtle arts of avarice. He had grown in power, entered into the greater secrets of his order, until at last he stood here in the Besur’s shoes, boasting supremacy in Noorhitam only a little less than that of the emperor and a few of his greater lords.

“Lie to the emperor,” he whispered, considering. Was this not, perhaps, the final depth to which he could plunge? Would it make any difference, really, considering the rest of his life’s deeds? “Lie to the emperor . . . .”

He sighed heavily, his great body shaking with a sudden wave of something close to sorrow; sorrow for that boy he had been, bright-eyed with religious fervor that mirrored his dear mother’s and all her hopes for him. That boy whose vision was so swiftly clouded, never to be cleared again.

He turned from the window. And screamed.

The scream scarcely had a chance at life before it was stifled by the pillow thrust unceremoniously into his mouth by the deft hand of Sairu, who smiled at him. “None of that, Honored Besur,” she said. “I don’t want your lackeys swarming. I have a few questions I would put to you, and I think you will prefer the privacy as much as I.”

The Besur spat out the pillow and opened his mouth to roar like a lion. But a flash from Sairu’s eyes warned him, and he dropped the roar in exchange for a furious whisper. “Where is Lady Hariawan?”

“No,” said Sairu. “I’ll ask the questions.”

She was so small and he so huge that he cherished, momentarily, a vision of taking her in his arms and crushing the life out of that wretched smile. The muscles in his shoulders twitched, eager to fulfill that vision.

But the next moment he saw two knives in her hands, which had not been there the moment before.

“We can make this unpleasant,” said Sairu, “or you can comply, and I’ll be on my way much more swiftly. Understand?”

“You—you would dare threaten the Besur of—”

“Before you go on,” said the girl, “know this: My first loyalty is to my emperor. My second is to my lady. You are not high on the list of those to whom I feel any great devotion. What is more”—and she took a threatening step toward him, her eyes dark behind the smile—“your secrets have caused my mistress nothing but danger, and I, for one, am sick of them.”

The Besur took a step back for each step she took forward, and soon found himself pressed against the sill of his window. He felt the air of many levels behind him. He would not survive a jump.

“What are your questions?” he demanded in a growl, like a cornered cur.

“Why did you send my mistress to Daramuti?”

“To recover from—”

“Besur.” She spoke his title sharply, as a warning. He drew a long breath. Then he spoke, slowly but without falsehood. She could read the truth in his frightened eyes.

“She met something in the Dream. Something terrible. It hurt her.”

“The burn,” Sairu said promptly.

“Yes. You see, nothing should have been able to touch her in the Dream. She walked in spirit, not in body. And while the spirit may, it is true, be assaulted by nightmares, the body should be safe. Yet whatever she met while dream-walking hurt her in body as well as spirit.”

“In spirit?” said Sairu. “How did it wound her spirit?”

“She was changed,” said the Besur, his lip curling. “Before that night, Lady Hariawan was not the empty-eyed creature you met. She was strong. She was sharp as an arrow-tip. Quick to learn, quick to wrath.” He closed his eyes then, remembering. “She came to us from the Awan Clan along with three other tribute girls of various clan families. But within days she dominated her sisters, and the brothers were in awe of both her beauty and her force of will. Within a month she demanded audience with me and told me that she could dream-walk. Not like my brethren and I dream-walked, tentatively nosing about in the mists on the edge of the Dream. No. She could truly
walk
, like the Dream Walkers of old, plunging deep into the Realm of Dreams and bringing back tales of the visions she saw.”

“How did you know she spoke the truth about those visions?” Sairu asked.

“We have holy texts,” said the Besur, glaring at her. “Generations ago there were many Dream Walkers who could do as Lady Hariawan does, and they wrote down the things they saw. We have sought after those things for over a hundred years but never found them. Then Lady Hariawan came to us and told of what she saw in the Dream, and it was as though she had read the texts for herself.”

“Had she not?”

“No. Lady Hariawan can neither read nor write, nor can any man or woman of the Awan Clan. She did not recite to us or quote. She truly
saw
.”

Sairu nodded. “Very well, Besur. And what did you and your brethren decide to do with this talent of hers? What was your plan?”

His face went red, and every feature betrayed his unwillingness to answer. Sairu took another step toward him, and he pressed harder into the sill, feeling wind on the back of his head. Then, with great reluctance, he said, “We sent her to find Hulan’s Gate.”

“Why?”

“We are the priests of Hulan. Need you ask?”

“Besur,” said Sairu, her smile most patient, “do not try to convince me that either you or your brothers were concerned in the least with holy ascension. You value Lady Hariawan too much for that to be the truth. You hired a Golden Daughter to protect her, you sent her into hiding. She means more to you than access to your goddess, whom you do not worship in your heart. What is your true purpose for discovering Hulan’s Gate?”

A flash of shame crossed his face, and the Besur lowered his eyes, staring at the floor beneath Sairu’s feet. He whispered the truth like a confession. “The Dream Walkers of old wrote of fabulous treasures hidden in Hulan’s Garden. They wrote of gemstones and carbuncles beyond compare.”

Sairu recalled the stones Jovann had pressed into her hand. Flaming opals, but far more beautiful, far more valuable than any opals she had ever before seen, even those adorning the emperor’s crown. “So you hoped to use my Lady Hariawan to fill your own coffers,” she said, and added spitefully, “Holy Father.”

The Besur made neither move nor answer, and he would not meet her gaze.

“I want you to tell me,” Sairu continued, “about this thing which my mistress encountered and which caused her such hurt. What was it?”

“I do not know.”

“But you have a guess.”

Again he did not answer.

“Honored Besur,” said Sairu, “while keeping watch over my mistress’s sleep, I felt shadows moving in a realm just beyond my perception but as real and as near to me as you even now stand. What were they?”

The angry red drained from the Besur’s face, leaving him pale, almost grey. With an effort he spoke: “The Dream Walkers of old wrote of a cult. It was called the Order of the Greater Dark and said to be comprised of those who once worshipped Hulan. Those whom Hulan betrayed.”

Sairu thought about this for but a moment. Then she said, “The Chhayans.”

“Yes,” said the Besur. “Those who worshipped the sun and the moon before our people took over this land and this faith. Those who turned from their goddess when she turned from them. According to the Dream Walkers of old, they too seek Hulan’s Gate. But for a different purpose.”

“What purpose?”

“We do not know. We have only our guesses.”

“Destruction. Revenge,” said Sairu, easily reading those guesses in his eyes.

The Besur nodded.

“And you think it was they—this Order of the Greater Dark—who harmed my Lady Hariawan? Who struck her?”

But here the Besur shook his head. “I do not know. If they are Dream Walkers like unto us, they would not be able to cause her physical harm. Not one so powerful in the arts as she! They could pursue her, follow her, harry her. But they could not touch her, not in that world.”

Sairu studied the Besur’s face. “You think they want her, don’t you? You think they want to use her to find Hulan’s Gate.”

“There has not been a Dream Walker such as Lady Hariawan in over a century. If the Order of the Greater Dark wishes to pursue its vengeance, it might very well need her in order to succeed.”

“Do they know she’s a woman?”

“I doubt it. As we do not take our physical forms into the Dream, we appear as no more than phantoms to each other in that realm. They would see only a powerful Walker, not a woman.”

“So, in this world, they would not know how to find her. And after her assault, hoping to throw them off the trail, you sent her far from the Crown of the Moon and the other Dream Walkers.”

The Besur nodded.

“That explains a good deal,” said Sairu, turning the knife in her right hand reflectively. “But it does not tell me why a Crouching Shadow tried to kill her.”

“
What?
”

“Yes, Honored Besur,” said Sairu. “One of the very slaves you hand-picked to journey with us to Daramuti proved an assassin. A Crouching Shadow bent on my mistress’s destruction. Are they also part of this Order of the Greater Dark?”

“No,” said the Besur swiftly. “No, they are not. They are . . .”

“Yes?”

Grudgingly he admitted, “They are the self-styled protectors of Hulan and her children. They have plagued my fellow Dream-Walkers and me for as long as we have practiced our art. As they themselves cannot enter the Dream, neither do they believe other mortals should. They have killed more than a few of my order over the years. And if they knew that a Dream Walker of Lady Hariawan’s abilities had come to the Crown of the Moon, well—”

“They would stop at nothing to find and kill her as well, thus protecting Hulan’s Garden from mortal invasion.”

The Besur nodded shortly. Then he said, “They are all fools.”

“They are not the only fools,” Sairu replied, perhaps more sharply than she should have. Then, her voice once more sweet as poison, “Does Princess Safiya know this?”

“I have not told her, no. We do not divulge all our secrets to the Golden Mother.”

“And she considers you no more than a weak old blusterer,” Sairu said, “so she would not seek you out for information.” Once more the Besur’s cheeks flushed with rage. But Sairu continued, “There, at least, my dear Mother is at fault. For you are not
merely
a weak old blusterer. You are also cunning to a frightening extreme.”

Oddly mollified, the Besur nodded. “I have my moments.” Then, surprised when Sairu suddenly flicked both her knives out of sight into the sleeves of her priest’s robe and turned from him, he said, “Where are you going?”

“You have nothing more to tell me. I have business elsewhere.”

“What business?”

“The protection of my lady.”

“She is alive then? She is safe?”

“She is hidden,” said Sairu. “And you will not see her until I know for certain that she is, indeed, safe. Until then, Honored Besur, do not look for me.”

With that, she was gone. The Besur stood alone in his chamber with only his shame for company.

All cats possess an uncanny ability for melting into the shadows and vanishing, escaping detection by even the sharpest eye. But this cat was more than a cat. He did not merely melt into the shadows; he seemed to become a shadow himself, flitting along the floor and wall with such silent stealth that he fancied, if he wasn’t careful, he might even lose himself.

This thought made him grin.

His grin diminished as he penetrated deeper into the passages beneath the Crown of the Moon. Since death and despair are considered unseemly companions for celestial worshippers, the only entrance to the temple dungeons was found not in any of the main temple buildings, but in a lowly guardhouse in the far western corner of the temple grounds. The guardhouse itself was humble enough, belying the vastness of the dungeon passages below.

How many sad souls languished in these subterranean cells? What might be their crimes? The cat shivered as he proceeded, his grin long gone. He passed guards and prison-keepers at intervals, and they stank of the worst kind of mortality: cruelty, sprung from fear and masked in illusions of false justice.

He thought with sorrow, suddenly, of the Lady Moon herself. He knew that she, high in her vaulted heavens, sang of such evils as this, and her song was full of tears. And yet how many of these poor prisoners were incarcerated in her name?