Shallows of Night - 02 (23 page)

She studied him for a moment in the twilight, the fast-disappearing sun now a dusky ruby glowing between the buildings on Okan Road. And the strange light, burnished and intense, drew all the color from her face, causing her to appear pale, shadows building in layers around her eyes, across the hollows below her cheeks. The skin was perfectly drawn, not a line, not a blemish marred its satin surface. She stood quite still, all light and dark, and he felt compelled to reach out and touch the face to assure himself that it was indeed flesh and blood, warm and pliant, that he was not staring at some fantastically conceived and crafted mask. Her lashes dipped for an instant and her lips parted as if she were about to say something. Then her lids rose and her slim hand moved startlingly, passing through the light, then black shadow, as she reached down for his hand. And she managed somehow to turn that simple gesture into a tender caress as she led him wordlessly from the room, into the dim corridor, the great lamp not yet spilling its tawny light.

Down the curving stairs in a wide arc and into the rear of the house where he had never before ventured. They went out the back, swiftly silently, through a small wooden door with a large iron lock and, instead of the expected crowded street, Ronin found himself in a spacious garden, lush and green with the plumage of ripe foliage.

Amid the artful jungle of greenery stood a pair of four-legged creatures, saddled and harnessed. They snorted and pawed the earth as Ronin and Matsu neared them so that their attendants were obliged to pull on their bits and talk to them soothingly in meaningless words.

“These are not horses,” said Ronin and Matsu smiled.

“No. They are luma. Steeds from the far north, very powerful and quite intelligent.” She shrugged. “Horses are quite stupid. They are fine for warfare and that is where they are primarily used. In any event, the luma are quite rare.” She lifted one arm. “This one is a present from Kiri.”

The animal was a deep red-brown stallion with a thick red mane. It had a long tapering head with flaring nostrils and erect triangular ears. Its eyes, round and large, were a deep blue and, between them, thrusting from the thick skull, were three stubby yellow horns in a vertical row like a miniature trident. The luma had no tail but the lower reaches of its legs were streamered with silky red hair.

Slowly, Ronin approached it. One large blue eye followed his progress with curiosity and, as Matsu had told him, intelligence and when he reached out to stroke its head it snorted and pushed its muzzle against his hand.

He mounted the luma and Matsu leapt onto her own, a gray mare with a pure white mane. He saw that a double slit in her robe allowed her to sit astride the luma without difficulty.

They rode out from the dense garden, the attendants opening thick iron gates, the lumas’ hoofs resounding against the cobbles and the close walls of the city’s streets like pounding hammers, and blue-white sparks flew in their wake.

The dragons along his arms rippled in the wind, seeming to come alive dancing across his body to the music of their movement. Matsu, riding just ahead of him, cried out frequently, guiding her mount and warning the crowds clogging the streets. Dark figures scrambled hastily from their path, pointing and murmuring, their words jumbled and lost in the swift passage.

Into the dark labyrinth of the delta, the port area less jammed with people but with narrower, twisting streets. Then, all at once, they broke from the confinement of the alleys of the bund, purple and black and deep red in the last of the sun, a minute crescent now against the unmarred horizon as it heaved its bulk into the welcoming embrace of the singing sea.

Along the wooden boards of the bund they raced, the kubaru’s songs a spice on the salt air. He inhaled the scents of the sea, pungent drying fish, the cloying sweetness of the poppy’s syrup, and the violet faces of the harrtin with their wide verandas, impassively observing the end of another day, swept by them in majestic array.

Until, abruptly, they were alone on the sand, the curving, darkling beach stretching before them in exultant desolation, and Ronin’s luma lifted its head in an unmistakable sound of pleasure and triumph, calling, galloping, galloping, the sea to the left now cinnabar solid in the last of the red light, and he felt a tremendous jolt of adrenaline, as if he were joining battle, and his heart thudded and, as his steed leapt over a dark dune, its crest as sinuous as a snake, he unsheathed his sword and lifted it toward the cold pinpoints of light just becoming visible and he thought, Let The Dolman come. I welcome now the Makkon’s freezing embrace, for surely I am its nemesis. I am its slayer.

And he rode on into the deepening dusk with Matsu at his side, her shadowed face impassive, thinking her unfathomable thoughts.

When the hazy golden lights of Sha’angh’sei were but a smear behind them, Matsu broke off and called to him, into the singing wind rolling in off the turbulent sea, alive with green and blue phosphorescence.

“I must leave you here, Ronin. Ride on. The luma will take you unerringly.”

“But what—”

She was gone, had already wheeled her mount, its hoofs but a whisper against the sand in the night, and he shrugged, dug his heels into the luma’s flanks as she had instructed him, and it leapt forward. He concentrated on its power, the concordant rippling of its muscles, the thin film of sweat slickening its rich coat, and then it was slowing, snorting and bobbing its head as if telling him of something ahead.

He peered into the darkness and heard the luma’s prancing steps before he saw its silhouette looming up before him. All at once he was close enough to see that it was of a deep saffron with a black mane.

Astride it sat Kiri. The lustrous violet eyes stared back at him. She flicked her head and he saw the unmistakable lines of her proud face. Her long dark hair was unbound, streaming in the wind. It was held back from her face by a narrow band of yellow topaz. She wore a pale yellow robe with golden flowers embroidered upon it in the most intricate pattern. It was different from all the others he had ever seen but he could not tell why.

“Kiri,” he said almost breathlessly, the wind moaning between them, “I thank you for this present. It gives me great pleasure to ride.”

She smiled. “It suits you well, the luma, and I am told that it welcomed you immediately; they are not easily tamed, the luma.”

“Yes, but how in—”

“Come!” she called over the shifting sand, pulling on her reins. “Ride with me, my warrior.”

And over the undulating dunes, by the shore of the crashing luminescent sea, they flew, chill white spray thrown up by the lumas’ flashing hoofs, sparkling their hair and faces. Her feet were bare, digging into the creature’s flanks, spurring it on.

“Kiri,” he called. “What of the Council? What trick have you played on me?”

She shook her head, hair like a vast fan. “No trick. Only the truth.” Her pale face turned to him. “If I had told you, you would not have believed me.” The sea crashed around them as they sped into the yellow surf. He could hear the jangle of the bits, the creak of their saddles very clear on the cold air. “The Council is an elaborate myth. It is best for the people to believe that a body rules their lives and governs the city. But the truth is that no such Council could exist here and survive. Sha’angh’sei would not tolerate it.”

“You talk as if the city were alive.”

She nodded. “There is no other place in all the world like it. Yes, a Council of the factions makes sense here only as thought. In reality, they would tear each other apart.”

“Who sees the people who wait for audience in the walled city?”

“They see me, when they see anyone at all.”

He stared at her, back erect, hair billowing, eyes like wells out of time.

“You? But why? Do you lead a faction within Sha’angh’sei?”

She laughed then, deep and long, a delightful sound, the wind carrying her melodious voice into the reaches of the night.

“No, my warrior, not a faction.”

Surf sprayed along the lumas’ flanks so that they gleamed in the phosphorescence. She dug her heels into her mount and she sped ahead, over the sighing dunes, their white crests shifting, and he took the water route, cutting across a crescent cove, the sea flaring outward like wings in his wake. The stars seemed very close at that moment.

He broke from the surf, his steed’s coat fire red now, as deeply crimson as a hurled torch, hearing her startling cry, “Not a faction, oh no. Only one can rule. Into one’s hands is delivered the ultimate power.” Her face a platinum and onyx helm in the cold light. “It is I, Ronin. I am the Empress of Sha’angh’sei.”

The night was an expert shroud. Somewhere, water dripped dolefully. The lamps were unlit and no one came to relight them. A strident argument raged from an open window on the second story overhead. There was a slap and a brief cry. Silence. He crouched in a doorway, cloaked in shadow, still and watchful. A dog howled and he heard the pad of its paws. The sharp odor of sweat as two women reeled by, laughing, their robes held together by unsteady hands; the momentary glow of white skin. Then the street was quite deserted.

The gates opened at their approach and he inhaled the humid perfume of the green velvet garden, black now in the night, for only after they had dismounted and their glistening lumas were led away, snorting and prancing, was a tiny torch lit.

The lushness was overwhelming after the barren beauty of the white sand and black sky. He breathed the jasmine air, listened to the myriad rustling all around him.

Yellow insects dancing in the torchlight as she moved toward him. The silence was startling and he put a hand out to stop her. After a moment the nocturnal noises commenced again.

She took his hand, her face a pale oval, wreathed by the trembling forest of her hair, and they walked across the grass, through a maze of hedges reaching far above their heads, past whispering firs, scented and jeweled with dew, to the other side of the garden. She dropped the torch and smothered the flame. They were in total darkness and the small sounds were suddenly amplified as vision went to nil. His pupils expanded. They stood before a blank stone building. A recessed door stood ajar and she bade him enter. He turned on the threshold.

“Kiri, why did Tuolin suggest I seek out the Council?”

She shrugged. “Perhaps he wished to give you hope.”

“But there is no Council.”

“I hardly think that Tuolin would know that.”

“Are you sure?”

“Reasonably. Why?”

“I—do not know. For a moment I thought—”

“Yes?”

“Why should he leave so unexpectedly?”

“Soldiers are governed by their own time. He left because he was summoned early.”

“Of course. You must be right.”

He turned. They were in a black corridor.

“Walk straight ahead,” she said from behind him. “There are no turnings.”

Still he kept his eyes moving.

“The woman you brought in is much better. She is up and wanting to help the girls. Her recovery has been remarkably swift.”

“What has she told you?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“She is mute.”

“I would like to see her.”

“Certainly. Matsu has told her about you. She wants to thank—”

He staggered and almost fell, the breath lost inside of him, sucked away. Before him was light, an abrupt end to the blackness, and what he saw was an immense hall built all of streaked marble, yellow and pink and black, the arched, gilt roof supported by twelve pillars, six on each side. The muraled walls were dusky in the light from golden braziers hung at intervals, watery and flowing in their depiction of strange, beautiful women and men, golden-skinned, sapphire-haired, tall and lithe. He blinked and forced his lungs to work.

“What is it?” Her hands on his shoulders.

“I have seen this place before.” Voice thick and furry.

“Oh, but that is impossible. You—”

“I have been here before, Kiri—”

“Ronin—”

“Will be here again, I know that now. Believe me, I know this place. In the City of Ten Thousand Paths, in the house of dor-Sefrith, the great magus of Ama-no-mori—”

He had waited long enough. He went cautiously across the street, from shadow to shadow, and when he stood beneath the stone jar his sword was out.

He went in quickly and silently, leading with his right shoulder to present the smallest target. The stench of the shop’s supplies of potions and powders was heavily in the air and he knew even before he looked that the bottles and jars and phials were lying smashed on the floor, their mysterious contents spilled darkly, lying in small mounds and thick streaks, mingled in arcane combinations, drifting on the night wind.

He found the apothecary against the side of the counter in back, spread-eagled, the blade of an ax protruding like an obscene growth from the frail chest. Ronin tried to pull him down but the blade had gone entirely through him, impaling him to the wood. Ronin pulled at the haft and it came away, the body sliding limply down into the dry rivers of powders littering the floor.

Ronin stared at where the old man had hung. Along the wood were two dark streaks in the shape of an inverted V, as if he had been trying to write some message in his own blood as it gushed from him, life ebbing away.

The last hope gone now, the scroll useless and nothing to stop The Dolman, the death of man assured, and his blade was a silver arc and he felt the bite and heard the scream at the same instant. He hacked through both legs and an ax fell heavily to the floor. Creakings as of weight on the floor boards and there was movement all around him. He whirled and thrust obliquely, short and chopping, the blade biting deeply, then, reversing the momentum of his thrust, used the opposite edge to slice into another man’s neck. Hot blood spurted at his face and he moved away from the bodies dancing frenziedly as they died.

They rushed him now, lunging for his sword arm, and he swung, fingers dismembered, hands split like butchered meat, but there were far too many, they were taking no chances, and at length they had it and pulled him down to the airless floor. Forearms along his windpipe. He struggled but his hands and legs were pinioned and, lungs laboring, finding no oxygen, he began to tumble down an endless escarpment of sand into a black land where sickle-bladed axes grew like uncut wheat from crimson corpses.