Golden Daughter (53 page)

“But,”—and the Dragon leaned over Lady Hariawan, his inordinately long neck stretched across her head so that he might look Jovann in the eye—“she is not the one I seek, is she, little man-beast? For she can only walk the outer crust of the Dream, this dusty wasteland where mortal minds form strange sights, where nothing is true, nothing is real. Such a Walker is incapable of finding something so vital as Hymlumé’s Gate! She is useless. She is nothing.

“You, however . . . I saw you in the Deeper Dream. Down beneath all this surface layer, down beneath the reach of Time. I saw you walking where mortals cannot go, and yet you walked and you lived.”

Jovann wanted more than anything in that moment to take a backward step. Just one. He did not even think to turn, to run, to try to escape. Only one step back, one desperate attempt to create a little space, such a little space, between himself and those burning eyes.

He held his ground.

“You are the Dream Walker I need,” the Dragon said. “Your father knew it. He tried to protect you, tried to send you away and keep you from me. But he could not. Not in the end. Nothing I desire is kept from me.”

Here the Dragon drew back his head, his long neck vanishing into his shoulders so that his proportions were once more near to a man’s. His grin, however, was all dragon. “Take me to the Moon’s Gate, boy.”

“I cannot,” said Jovann.

“Cannot? Or will not?”

“Cannot. I am not the Dream Walker.”

The Dragon’s grin vanished. Fire flared up behind his teeth. “You are. I saw you in the Deeper Dream.”

“I was led there,” Jovann said. “I did not dream-walk on my own.”

The Dragon made no move save for the wavering flame on his tongue. Then he lifted one hand, slowly extending one finger so that the full length of his talon might gleam for a moment beneath Jovann’s nose. He rested this talon across Lady Hariawan’s throat. He said: “I will not beg. I will not barter. I will not even ask. I will command one last time. And you will obey me.” He applied pressure, and a thin line of blood ran in delicate trickle down the pale skin of the lady’s neck.

Lady Hariawan raised her gaze. She fixed Jovann with her deep eyes, so lovely and so sad. The Dragon holding her formed the words with his lips, but it was she who spoke. In a voice low and rough, perhaps with fear, she said, “Take me to the Moon’s Gate, Juong-Khla Jovann.”

She spoke his name. The name he had given her so freely. So foolishly.

Jovann turned and marched past the massive dray, the humming gong, and the long line of chain-linked phantoms, all of whom watched him through hollow pits where their eyes had once been. Chhayans, he knew, for only a Chhayan would be willing to suffer such agony for the sake of revenge. He shuddered as he passed them, his own people, his kin, and wondered if he knew the names of the men they had once been. He marched to the front of the procession, and there he stood alone.

He felt his physical body containing him like a prison. How helpless he was in this form! In spirit he might fly away, might even assume a different shape. But in his body he was weak, and he could not resist both the Dragon and the lady.

“Please,” he whispered, gazing out upon the emptiness around him. He did not know to whom he spoke, but he felt the need and whispered with all his heart. “Please help me.”

Across the Boundless, the wood thrush replied: “
Follow me, Jovann.
”

Jovann took a step. He took a second.

As he took the third, he saw Hulan’s Gate appear before him. He knew then, beyond any doubt, that whatever doom the Dragon intended would surely come to pass. And he recalled the first words Hulan had said to him when he, an unworthy mortal, had stood in her mighty presence:

“I have dreaded and longed for your coming. It is for me the foretelling of sorrow.
”

“Forgive me, Hulan,” he whispered as the Gate grew upon the horizon. “Forgive me.”

The Path of Nightmares is beyond mortal tongues to tell. For to each traveler it wears a different aspect, making itself individually dreadful according to individual dread. It is a long Path, a winding way through shadows and fires and images indescribable, but the Khla men marched it with grim, determined strides. They had suffered for too long, for too many generations, to back down now.

The young dragon led them. He wore a man’s shape once more, but there was a dragon in his eyes. For him the Path took on the most dreadful nature, revealing frightful, hellish images, spilling emotions and sensations down upon his head that would have slain a mere mortal. But he was a dragon now. It seemed to him that all the horror rolled off his shoulders like water. This was not in fact the truth. Instead the horror soaked down beneath his armor plating, beneath his skin, sinking into that place where his heart once beat but where now there was only fire. And there the fire consumed it and mounted in rage, poison, and intensity. So while his soul slowly filled up to the brim with terror of the Dragon’s Path through the winding Between, he believed it was courage that rose inside him, readying him for the task to come.

They traveled swiftly according to mortal perception of Time, which is not a governing force in the Between. And they gathered more warriors in their wake. Men of each Chhayan clan felt the summoning of the Greater Dark. And they rose up from whatever work they had been about, took up their weapons, and stepped into the Between. Their vengeance was at hand. The blood of their forefathers would be avenged and then surpassed in the blood of the Kitar usurpers. They passed out of the Near World of mortals into the winding darkness of the Dragon’s Path, adding their number to that of their brethren.

The Wood shuddered with the pound of marching feet. Trees turned to look and saw shadows moving beneath their branches, following that Path which made the whole of the Wood shrink and draw away in terror, hiding itself from view and reach. And so there was only the swirling mist of the Dream to shroud the evil Path. The Chhayans passed between the worlds, following the lead of the young dragon at their head. He felt the power of all his people behind him. Men of blood, men of the plains, men of brutal intent. He felt them behind him like a surging tidal wave, and he knew that nothing could turn back the coming destruction.

He put up a hand. He felt the power of all the Chhayans become his own when they, seeing that gesture, stopped. The Path shuddered with the force of their feet coming to rest all at the same moment, and the silence of their collected waiting was deafening.

The young dragon turned and faced them. And, because the Between is not like the Near World, he felt as though he could look into every single face of all those thousands individually, at the same moment. So it was to each man personally that he spoke.

“The Kitar dogs must die.”

As one motion, they brought their hands together about their weapons: swords, lances, spears, clubs, axes. As one voice, they echoed his: “
Die!
”

“The Kitar dogs must die,” the young dragon repeated.

“
Die!
”

“The Kitar dogs must die!”

“
Die!
”

“
Die!
”

“
Die!
”

Now their voices rolled together into the various battle cries of their clans, and the Between was filled with their roaring, tearing, animalistic thunder. And before each clan chief, a doorway into the Near World opened. Each chief saw the city of Lunthea Maly before his eyes, the winding streets leading up to the palace on the hill above. Save for one chief, who saw the darkness of a dungeon cell and knew that he and his men should have the first taste of Kitar blood upon their blades.

A doorway appeared before the young dragon as well, and he licked a long forked tongue across his teeth at the sight. He felt his man’s form giving way, felt the sinuous power of his true form, his dragon’s body, taking over. It was agony and it was glory all rolled into one.

“Go!” he shouted, and his voice was a roar, and fire burst from his throat.

“Go!” the Chhayan chieftains bellowed, and rushed forward to their various doors.

The young dragon dove out of the Path and into the darkness of a heavy night, into the disgusting, cloying mortality of the Near World. His wings pounded the air and the dust of the street, and he took to the sky. In a vertiginous spiral, he climbed into the night, snarling at the stars above him, at the moon herself. What fools the Chhayans had been to worship her all those long generations! But no more. Tonight they would prove the might of their hearts, the strength of their arms. No more pitiful, prayerful pleas to a goddess who did not care. No more songs and chants for deliverance from an enemy she always favored. They would take back what belonged to them.

Never in his life had the young dragon been more Chhayan than he was as he spread wide his wings, caught the rising heat of an updraft, and circled slowly, high above the city. Lunthea Maly was but a child’s toy, and he would play as he liked tonight. He saw the Chhayan chieftains and their armies emerging from the Between at different points all around the city, surrounding the palace and the temple. He saw the flash of the Long Fire as they shot the first of their rocket-arrows into the roofs of civilian houses, and soon the city was alive with fire. But the stone walls of Manusbau itself would be far too strong for those small flames.

The young dragon smiled. So much of what had been Sunan was lost. His fire was too great to allow for remnant shreds of humanity. Every time he flamed, every time he took on this powerful, horn-crowned form that was the truth of him now, more of the man was demolished, swallowed up, and forgotten.

Nevertheless, as he tilted his wings and sped down from the heavens, swooping toward the massive palace walls, the shining towers of the Kitar emperor which would soon go up like matchsticks under his flame, he remembered his brother’s words to him, spoken what seemed an age ago now:

“
You rose up in the form of a dragon. A great, fire-filled dragon, Sunan, such as the legends speak of! And you were mighty, and you were beautiful, and all who saw you trembled, even our father. You were terrible in the eyes of the Khla warriors, and you led them into battle.
”

At the memory of his brother’s voice, the fire swelled so greatly in the young dragon’s breast that he had to give it vent. He opened his mouth and, as he flashed past the great south gate of the palace, he blasted it with all the force of his hatred. The gate, built of stone and age-hardened wood, burst under the intensity of that blast. The wood caught flame, and the stone melted, and men fled screaming or were consumed.

The young dragon smiled as he gained altitude again. But then he looked back, his long neck twisting grotesquely over his shoulder. He pivoted in the air and hung suspended on the night sky, staring down at the wreckage he had caused. He saw the Seh Clan swarming up from the streets, making for the break in the wall, their rockets firing as tiny mimics of his own great blast. They would burn themselves and even die in the poison of dragon vapors as they sought to burst through.

But there was something wrong. The young dragon snarled with anger as he realized.

The Kitar dogs were not taken by surprise. The emperor’s mighty battalions led by various warlords gathered in formation. Their armor, structured according to all the most advanced designs of the known world, shone in the firelight. They lined themselves up in defense against the oncoming Chhayan barbarians clad in leather and furs. And the Chhayans, burning up with rage, flung themselves upon those armor walls and broke and died.

The surprise had not succeeded. The Kitar were prepared.

Fury burst from the young dragon, from his eyes and his nostrils and his gaping mouth. Like a demon from the deepest pit he fell, streaking through the darkness, and set upon the wall again, breaking and melting it wherever his fire struck. He felt arrows biting like gnats,
pinging
ineffectually off his scales. One brave Kitar warrior stood his ground under the dragon’s approach. The dragon saw the wide whites of his eyes just before he was engulfed in fire. But before the fire took his life, he flung a spear with dreadful accuracy. The dragon felt the spear bite down into the softer flesh around his eyes. One small variation in its flight, and the spear would have pierced the eye itself.

Roaring in fury, the dragon soared up again, tearing at his face, tearing away the spear. He watched as other Chhayan clans swarmed over the breaks in the walls. He watched them hurl themselves at the Kitar front, watched them driven back, slowly, into the gaps.

Sunan had never cared, or had pretended never to care, for his father’s dream. He had never been truly Chhayan. But the young dragon was not Sunan. Not anymore.

“We will not lose this night,” he swore. Even as archers filled the air with clouds of arrows aimed at his wings and soft underbelly, he swept over the walls and into the broad grounds of Manusbau. All was alight with war and fear, but in the sprawling gardens he found a dark place, and there he landed and assumed his man’s form once more. Keeping to the shadows, moving with the strange subtlety of a shade, he ran. And warriors searching for the great, snakelike body of a monster from myth did not turn or look his way. He did not wear the armor of a Chhayan, and might easily be mistaken in his tattered Pen-Chan robes for some slave of the household.

So he gained access to the main structure of Manusbau, the emperor’s own hall. Sunan may have paused, gasped, and been overawed by the beauty and magnificence of the Anuk’s abode. But the dragon neither saw nor cared. Still skulking through the deeper shadows, avoiding detection, he slipped through the gilded halls, following his nose and his hatred. These led him unerringly to a massive red and gold-plated door. When he pushed this open, he stood on the threshold of the emperor’s throne room.

It was dark. Very different from the chamber it had been the afternoon before when the emperor sat and listened to the complaints and arguments of his gathered court. All was heavy with shadows and gloom, for none of the massive lanterns had been lit. Only a small lamp, burning bright at its spout, stood at the opposite end of the chamber at the feet of the emperor, who sat upon his throne. The gleaming lamplight shone upon the blade of his sword, which rested across his knees.

The emperor sat with his head bowed in an attitude of prayer. One hand lay on the hilt of his sword. The other hand rested upon his heart.

Sunan had never cared about the fate of the Emperor of Noorhitam. He had never been Chhayan enough, never been truly his father’s son. But he cared with all the intensity of passionate loathing for his brother Jovann. And once more that night, he recalled what Jovann had told him.

“
I saw myself standing before the Emperor of Noorhitam, and I knew it was he, though I have never seen his face. He sat weak before me, pleading. Begging me for something I could not hear. But I was strong, and I stood before him, ragged Chhayan that I am. I saw it, Sunan, as clearly as I see you now. More clearly even! And I know it will come to pass.”

But it would not come to pass. For it was not Jovann who would stand in power before the pleading Anuk Anwar.

“I have taken everything from you now, my brother,” the young dragon whispered even as he slipped into the hall and pulled the heavy door shut behind him. The emperor did not raise his gaze or move even so much as a flickering eyelid. “I have taken everything from you. Your father. Your inheritance. Your power. I have even taken your dream. You have become nothing. I have become everything.”

With each word he took a step, and so he crossed the hall. He still wore the form of a man, but fire spilled in liquid heat down from the tear ducts of his eyes, trailing burns across his skin, and more fire trickled from the corners of his mouth. He was a monster nightmarish to behold, the stuff of the most evil, most poisonous dreams. He reached the steps leading up to the emperor’s throne and took the first one.

But he did not take a second. For Princess Safiya’s blade sliced through the shadows and across his throat.