Six Celestial Swords (8 page)

“Better pirates than barbarians,” Xiadao Lu answered. Then he glanced over his shoulder at the sorcerer sitting cross-legged on the deck floor. “Tell me what you see through this mist of yours.”

“The barbarian ship remains on a western course. They don’t seem suspicious. Of course, that’s too good to be true.”

Xiadao Lu agreed. “Xu Liang knows. He can be fooled, but he is no fool. We were able to surprise him at the Tunghui River and at Ti Lao, but as you have seen, he does not live on his guard because he does not have to. Luck is with him.”

“A greater luck than your dragon ancestor?” Ma Shou wondered aloud, and if Xiadao Lu had known for certain that he was mocking, he’d have struck the sorcerer down in the very instant. Forgiving the man his strangeness and recalling that he was also useful, Xiadao Lu let him be.

“He has charm perhaps,” Ma Shou added. “And a great deal of it, but charm and luck do not always go hand-in-hand. Take away the charm of the Empress and the charm of Sheng Fan and you are left with what the barbarians will see.”

“What do you mean?” Xiadao Lu wanted to know. He disliked the sorcerer’s cryptic manner of speech.

Ma Shou sighed. “A man without his fame, in the eyes of an ignorant stranger, is nothing more than a man. Among strangers, one must earn his allies.”

“Or buy them,” someone added.

Xiadao Lu watched the captain of the
Jade Carp
make his way up the wide stairs of the high deck. He was a wiry man but solid. Xiadao Lu did not doubt that he knew how to use the sword slung at his belt.

A crooked smile captured the pirate’s lips. “Don’t worry. Your money wasn’t wasted. Let us catch the ship you’re following and I’ll prove it to you.”

Xiadao Lu laughed welcomingly at the man’s enthusiasm and confidence. “I’ve heard the rumors about you, Zhen Yu.”

“The rumors don’t do me justice.”

“You’ll get your chance,” Xiadao Lu assured. His features gradually firmed and he added, “When you do just remember one thing. I will destroy Xu Liang myself.”

Zhen Yu nodded, but his lopsided smile remained. Xiadao Lu didn’t trust the captain, but for now he had his purpose, just as the sorcerer did.

“The wind has shifted,” Ma Shou informed suddenly.

Zhen Yu lifted his face to the sky. “Yes. Now it’s southeastern.” He frowned. “It feels southeastern, but we’re still moving due west, at the same pace.”

“So is our fog,” Ma Shou added.

Xiadao Lu glowered. “Xu Liang!” He turned toward his own sorcerer. “Ma Shou, can you compensate?”

The other closed his eyes and placed his hands together. “Of course,” he mumbled. “But I will need time to meditate. Wind is not my area of expertise and conjuring this fog has required much of my attention. We will lose them for a brief span.”

“Unnatural fog, phantom winds that defy the true wind...” Zhen Yu shook his head. “I’ll advise you mystics to be cautious. Nature doesn’t like to be toyed with.”

“Neither do I,” Xiadao Lu snapped. “We will catch that ship and we will kill everyone onboard!” He nodded to Ma Shou. “I leave it to you, sorcerer”

Ma Shou fell utterly still.

Zhen Yu watched him for a moment, then said, “And what about the dragon? There are more of them out at sea than on land. More that are seen by men, at least. They can be dangerous.”

Xiadao Lu turned to face the sea with confidence. “Dragons are messengers,” he decided. “Be it good or ill, this one will deliver us our fate this day.”

FU RAN TOOK up a long spear as it was issued to him. He felt the ship moving as the steersman directed the
Pride of Celestia
into Xu Liang’s wind. They were moving much quicker than before, but not nearly quick enough to outrun a dragon if it meant to catch them. Fu Ran glanced toward his former lord and saw the eight armored men surrounding him.

Idiots! You can’t defend him from a dragon or the waves it’ll stir! We have the wind. You should be hauling him below decks.

They didn’t and, of course, they wouldn’t. They were too accustomed to ‘duty’, too inured in their station beneath their master. They didn’t dare to touch him. It never occurred to them that they could be protecting a friend and sometimes friends had to be handled roughly in order to be kept safe. But that was the trouble with life in Sheng Fan; ‘a place for everyone, and everyone in their place’. Those who existed outside of the system designated long ago by the very first emperor Sheng Fan had ever known were considered rogues, bandits, pirates, and worst of all, barbarians. Barbarians worst of all because they could never fit into the system, even if they wanted to. They were uncivilized, sharing the scruples of wild beasts, cruel and without virtue. Fu Ran was a son of Sheng Fan. He could go back if he wanted to and restore his ‘honor’. He wouldn’t, not even for a friend.

The ship swayed. A finned spine crested above the water, above the railing of the ship, momentarily shadowing the deck before the beast descended again and sent a minor wave crashing down on it. The brine-smelling water rushed beneath Fu Ran’s feet and tried to pull them out from under him. He maintained his balance and, with a glance, saw that the wave didn’t quite reach the stern, where Xu Liang remained in his meditative stance. Perhaps the wind would die too quickly if he stopped. Still, Fu Ran couldn’t help worrying that he would look back after the next wave and find that the mystic had been swept away.

“NOT YET!” YVAIN hollered to her crew from the helm. The beast rose again as it undulated through the sea, showing more of its lustrous scales this time, gleaming green and gold in the sunlight directly overhead. The strange fog was slowly falling behind them, along with whomever it concealed. The dragon stayed with them, more playfully than persistently. Dragons seemed more curious than malicious. However, their curiosity—because of their size—often proved deadly to sailors. Time would tell the outcome of this encounter.

Yvain’s gaze flitted toward the sorcerer aboard her ship, who’d maintained the presence of a specter throughout the journey thus far. Everyone knew he was there, but the days had gone by without so much as a glimpse of him as he holed himself in the tiny guest cabin and proceeded to pray.

As Yvain understood it, the Fanese people held their gods and ancestors in the same respect, believing that many of the gods began life as ordinary humans who, through leading extraordinary lives, were later deified. It was not that way in Aer. To the Aerans, heaven was known as Celestia and the ‘People of the Stars’ governed the lives beneath them. Sometimes they elected to show themselves through the eyes of mortals—one such as Yvain, whose eyes were considered several shades too brilliant to be anything but Celestian. It granted her no special talents, nor any powers—so far as she could tell—but many attributed her strong leadership skills to the star who’d given her its grace. She was the second child of her bloodline to have such eyes, a bloodline that was not purely Aeran, but crossed through an unprecedented marriage between her Aeran great-grandmother and a Neidran man.

In Neidra—the sweltering green land to the southwest of Sheng Fan—people believed in multiple gods and also worshipped their ancestors, the greatest of whom supposedly went to live among those deities after death. Yvain respected all religions and thus believed that whomever or whatever Xu Liang prayed to was listening and answering. His ‘wind god’, if such were the case, may turn out to be the salvation of her crew this day, and of the dragon, who she did not wish to harm.

The beast rose and flashed its glistening scales again. The sheen was so bright as the sunlight played off the dragon’s iridescent hide that Yvain had to close her eyes. At that precise moment she experienced a vision so sudden and so vivid that it was as if she hadn’t shielded her eyes at all from the blinding splendor of the dragon. She saw the sun rise over a cold, barren landscape. The trees were as skeletal fingers, grasping for the unreachable warmth. The land they were rooted in was as broken, unhealed skin, shrouded in an ill mist. A human figure stood alone, a silhouette against the red-orange brilliance of the ascending sun. Man or woman, child or elder, Yvain could not tell, but the sight of the individual made her instantly sad. There were tears in her eyes when she opened them again.

The dragon was gone.

The crew relaxed slowly, hesitant to release the collective breath everyone had been holding until they were certain the beast had returned to the depths of the ocean.

Fu Ran joined Yvain at the helm. The Fanese giant laughed, but he couldn’t conceal his relief. “Maybe we should consider keeping a sorcerer onboard for moments like that.”

Yvain’s moist eyes traveled past Fu Ran and stopped once again at Xu Liang. He was still in prayer, oblivious to the dragon’s departure. “I want to talk to him when he’s finished. Send him to my cabin.”

Fu Ran’s smile left him and he nodded once. Yvain realized then that her tone might have been unduly abrupt, but she did not make amends. She left the helm, determined not to let anyone see Yvain of the
Pride of Celestia
in tears.

T
HE DAY HAD nearly gone when Xu Liang felt a safe distance had been put between the Aeran vessel and the Fanese ship in pursuit. The dragon had been no real threat and left of its own volition. Or so it would seem.

A conference with Yvain revealed that the dragon may have had a purpose in its appearance after all. Xu Liang was not about to question the captain’s claim, not openly or privately. He saw no reason for her to lie. She seemed quite sane and, though it wasn’t readily apparent to look at her, he understood by talking to Yvain that she was a deeply spiritual woman. Her experience had been real, whether or not anyone else could feel or understand it. Xu Liang did feel the vision somewhat himself as she related it to him, sparing no detail, not even the tears that rimmed her spectacularly green eyes. It was in evidence that she’d intended to overlook that part of her story when she began hastily wiping at the moisture that was renewed with the telling.

Xu Liang stood in the middle of her large cabin, observing her respectfully as she sat at a modest table beneath the room’s only window. He had listened and thus far not spoken.

When it became clear that Yvain had nothing more to say, he selected his words carefully. “Dragons are ancient creatures,” he said. “Not only as a race, but as individuals as well. They are among the oldest sentient beings known to the world and they are very wise. Their wisdom inspires us and sometimes enables us to see what we would otherwise have spent our entire lives blind to.”

Yvain issued a weakly cynical smile. “That’s very touching, and very diplomatic.” Her gaze wandered out the window. “However...”

“However?” Xu Liang prompted.

She glanced at him, then said to the sea, “I don’t think it was the dragon. I think it’s hereditary.”

In that moment, Xu Liang felt like an eavesdropper on words that may have been somehow intended to be private. He did not allow that to delay his response for long. “How so?”

“My great-grandfather used to have visions,” Yvain replied after a pause. “Anything could trigger them. A word, a touch, a flower kissed by a summer breeze...anything. He kept record of them in his poetry. I’ve been told that I have his eyes.”