DAC 3 Precious Dragon (31 page)

Around the city gathered the troops of Heaven, mounted on unicorns and lion-dogs and deer. Beyond them, were immense engines: catapults and creaking wheeled citadels. Hell had tanks and guns, Heaven had arrows and bows, yet Embar Dea knew that, somehow, they were equally matched. Heaven had a strong, clear magic; she wondered whether this was still the case, or whether it now carried undercurrents and shadows, the betraying trails of secrets and lies.

The lion-dogs raised their chrysanthemum heads and roared as the dragons flew overhead, the sound reverberating out from the city walls and causing, somewhere, a ringing sound like a gong. Moments later, as they came in sight of the Imperial Palace, Embar Dea realized that it was indeed a gong: a circle of bronze the size of a house, situated at the summit of the citadel itself. It was the signal for the descent into Hell.

The truck containing Chen and the others trundled forward toward the lip of the chasm, picking up speed as it did so. Even Jhai's normally shuttered face wore an expression of alarm, which Chen was sure mirrored his own countenance. Miss Qi looked simply resolute.

"Here we go," said the guard, and there was a sudden lurching sensation, rather like a plane taking off, except that the nose of the truck dipped slightly instead of rising. Chen, unable to hold onto the sides of the truck because his hands were still bound, and reluctant to place faith in the rather frayed old seatbelt that circled his waist, could not hold back the thought that they might all fall out. Given that he, at least, was human and still alive, the thought was not an appealing one. He tried to wedge himself as tightly as possible against Zhu Irzh, and the demon seemed to understand what he was doing.

He need not, however, have worried. The descent was jerky, but it did not feel as though they were plummeting. Looking out the sides of the truck, Chen saw that they were part of a huge convoy of falling vehicles. A tank drifted past, made of red iron and covered with graffiti and images of devilish faces. A picture of a scantily clad female demon adorned its engine casing. Beyond, where Chen could dimly glimpse a fiery shore, a jet hurtled downward, nose-diving into Hell's heart. The air was filled with the sound of humming engines.

"Are we nearly there yet?" Zhu Irzh asked. Chen suppressed the momentary urge to strangle him. Perhaps it was a good thing that his hands were still bound.

"Dunno," said the guard. "ETA was supposed to be seven P.M. upper level time but nothing ever happens on time round here."

"It's four now," Zhu Irzh said, squinting at the watch on his bound wrist. "Three more hours of this. Great."

"At least there's a view," Jhai said, but negated her own words by closing her eyes and leaning back against the seat. Chen admired her fortitude.

"I had not thought," Miss Qi mused bitterly, "to see so much of Hell."

Something jumped against Chen's arm and made him start.

"What was that?"

"Sorry," Zhu Irzh said. "Think something just bit me." He shot Chen a warning glance and Chen realized what it was that had moved: the heart in its container, still stashed in the inside breast pocket of Zhu Irzh's coat.

"Don't worry about it," Chen said. "Made me jump, that's all."

"Lot of insects on some of them levels," the guard said, not without sympathy. The nose of the truck tilted and Chen looked downward through the flapping tarpaulin. The convoy stretched out below, growing more ragged now as they descended. There was no sign of any ground.

Pin was asleep when the alarm sounded. It was so loud that it felt as though he'd been picked up and slammed against a wall. He sat up with all the normal physiological reactions of shock: heart hammering, head pounding, sweat icy down his spine, before he remembered that he didn't actually possess a body. It didn't seem to make much difference at this particular point. The dormitory was a seething turmoil of startled demons. The crew was not the most organized group of people at the best of times and this sudden incursion threw them into complete chaos.

"Shut it!" Foreperson Tung yelled, barreling in through the door, pendulous breasts swinging unappealingly from side to side. "Get yourselves together!"

"What's going on?" someone shouted.

"The plant is under attack," Tung said.

"What?"

"I didn't hear anything!"

"Why weren't we told?"

"You weren't told because we've only just had the communication. Heaven's army is on its way."

Pin's imaginary heart leaped at this. If Heaven's warriors were coming, then perhaps he stood a chance of being rescued. But why would they bother? And did he really want to be rescued?

Demons clamored and lamented at Tung's words and Pin felt suddenly very sorry for them. They were a decent bunch, as demons went, and they had their own little lives here, just as he had. His sympathy was followed by a flood of anger: What right did Heaven have, to come in and disrupt everything? But that was the way of it everywhere: there you were, getting on with things, minding your own business, and suddenly some arsehole decides to start a war.

"Look, calm down!" Tung shouted. "You're not on your own. Hell's forces are coming. They'll reach us before Heaven does. They'll protect us—they can't afford to let this plant be shut down. If it does, then Hell itself shuts down and we might as well all pack up and shuffle off the Wheel. Just bleeding think, for a change."

A slight sigh of relief spread through the room.

"What are we going to do then?" someone asked.

"That's better," Tung said. "That's more like it! We've had clear instructions, for a change. You're to stay put, and go where you're told in order to defend the plant if necessary and keep an eye on things. So we want everyone on a cart and out of this compound."

"What if they do blow up the plant?" came a voice.

"Okay, it won't be pleasant. It'll get a bit hot. But think about it—you won't die. You can't even be sent to the lower levels, because you're in the lower levels. So you'll probably have a nasty couple of hours and then that will be it, and we'll have to see what Heaven does with us at the end of it. We're at war now."

With the rest of the crew, Pin piled onto a cart and, within minutes, they were hurtling out of the rail gates of the compound toward the mountains. He wished he'd had time to say goodbye to Mai; he hoped she'd be all right. But there simply hadn't been a moment.

It was still dark. Behind the hurtling cart, the railway tracks glowed bright against the desert earth and the compound and the mine were outlined in a sickly, glimmering radiance. It was lit up like a bloody beacon, Pin thought in dismay. Unless some form of magic could be utilized, Heaven could hardly miss it.

The cart shot through the mountain gap, rattling between the now-familiar rocky outcrops, and down toward the plant. More carts were coming fast behind, propelled by frantic demons, and more lay ahead, thundering down the slope and into the compound of the nuclear plant itself. Minutes later, Pin's cart joined them. Immediately, he was ushered off the cart and up to one of the big observation towers that stood on the four corners of the plant, there to stand guard with the rest of the crew. Below, the plant was a hive of activity, demons scurrying to and fro like insects. He looked anxiously up, but saw nothing, only the dim vastness of the sky. Might as well sit down, Pin thought, and did so.

Toward dawn, Pin was once more roused from a doze, this time by a shout.

"Something's coming!" A demon clambered to her feet and pointed.

This time, the sky was not empty. Its bronze expanse was filled with tiny specks that grew rapidly larger.

"What are they?" Pin asked.

"Planes!"

Moments later, the air above the plant was filled with hurtling jets, shrieking overhead and across the mountains. They dispersed quickly, then regrouped above the mountain wall to fly in tight formation, circling the basin of the valley in which the plant stood. They were followed by the infantry, tanks and trucks which shot past the plant and then, just before they hit the ground, slowed down, landing with a series of thuds and puffs of dust all across the plain. Within the hour, the plain was filled with grinding, trundling columns of vehicles, moving slowly into position until they formed rings around the plant itself. Pin had never imagined such an army: it looked as though the whole of Hell had been militarized.

Then, he saw that the rings of trucks were parting slightly, leaving a low track that led directly to the plant. An enormous tank advanced down the track, with a kind of awning on top in which two people sat. Both were demons. One was a huge being, armored, bristling with weapons like a lobster. It had the face of a lizard.

The other was female and, despite the heat, wearing a fur coat. Her face was pinched and bitter, sour as an old plum, but she still managed to radiate a faint air of pride.

"Workers!" the bristling demon shouted, through a loudhailer. "I am the Minister of War! As you know, Hell is under an unprovoked and unjustified attack by the forces of the Celestial Emperor. This plant is, as you also know, crucial to the smooth running of the kingdoms of the Emperor of Hell and we shall not let it fall. Keep to your posts and let the army do its work. Don't be afraid! If you look above you, you will see that the strongest forces of Hell are there, about to battle for your safety."

And when Pin again looked up, he saw that the skies were gristly with the multiple legs of the kuei. Somehow, he did not find the sight reassuring. But perhaps it did not matter, for beyond the kuei, he could now see a glowing mass falling slowly down the sky. The forces of Heaven were coming.

"What the fuck is my mum doing on a battlefield?" Zhu Irzh said.

Jhai gave him a wary glance. "That's your mother?"

"Yeah, she ditched my dad, threw him out of the house, and started seeing the Minister of War. I forgot to tell you. In all the excitement and that."

"And I thought my family was dysfunctional," Jhai sighed. They were still sitting in the truck, still bound. The tank containing the Minister of War and his consort had just rumbled by, heading for the industrial plant that, so Zhu Irzh had recently informed Chen, formed the main power source for the whole of Hell.

Chen leaned to one side and spoke urgently to Zhu Irzh. The guard had shuffled down from the truck by now and was having a quiet cigarette over by the side of a tank.

"I'm not at all keen on being captive while there's a battle going on. We won't even be able to make a run for it."

"I agree," Zhu Irzh said, and the women also nodded. "I couldn't do it while that guard was watching, but if you move round . . ."

Chen did so. He felt the demon's sharp claws sawing against his wrist and then a sudden sensation of freedom.

"Good. Thanks."

Meanwhile, Miss Qi had freed Jhai. Chen felt at a distinct disadvantage, with ordinary human fingernails. He did a cautious inner check, assessing the status of his own magic. Down here, furthest away from the home of the goddess Kuan Yin, the original source of his powers, the magic had dwindled to no more than a thin trickle, like the faintest source of moisture in the depths of the desert. A human among demons, Chen knew that he was worse than useless.

But he still possessed cunning. Better than nothing, wherever you found yourself.

Zhu Irzh gave him a nudge. "Look up there."

Chen did so and, had he known it, had the same experience as Pin on the watchtower: the kuei, and the glow and gleam of Heaven beyond.

"Do you think there's any chance of Kuan Yin putting in an appearance?" Zhu Irzh asked.

"I don't know whether any of the gods will be coming themselves or whether they're relying on the army," Chen said, but Miss Qi added:

"No, she won't. I heard before I left Heaven that she had gone into retreat and was not expected to emerge for several weeks."

"Lying low because she doesn't go along with the Emperor's plans." Zhu Irzh said. "Can't blame her."

"Neither can I, but she's the one person who might have been able to help me out," Chen said.

"Never mind," the demon replied. "You'll just have to rely on us."

Still flying at the end of the formation of dragons, Embar Dea dived low, keeping in the center of the void that led down through the levels of Hell. Rish had instructed them to keep close to the middle, rather than the edges, where missiles might be aimed at them from the Hellish shores.

Embar Dea's doubts had been burned away on the dive, as Heaven fell far behind and a crack opened up in the Sea of Night to let the Celestial armies through. Embar Dea had one last glimpse of Earth, serene and blue from this great height, half-concealed behind the veil that separated the worlds and that no radar or other human equipment would ever show. The moon, at which Embar Dea had often gazed, was even less clear, hidden behind a bright smear of light, its own magical field. Then they were through the veil again and flying down toward Hell. They were not, Embar Dea knew, doing the right thing, and yet it was the thing that had to be done.

Now, she could see the land that lay at Hell's floor, wrinkled and yellow like a beach from which the tide has only just drawn back. They were so high that Embar Dea knew that the sandy ridge was a mountain range, the hole, tiny enough to have been made by a child's toe, was in fact a colossal crater, and that the little sandworm coils above the surface of that sand were the kuei, flying between the dragons and the troops of Hell's Emperor.

At the sight of the kuei, Embar Dea's whiskers bristled and her mouth opened in an old, involuntary cry of war. The kuei: bred to fight dragons—bred, some said, from dragons, in one of Hell's unnatural experiments eons ago when monsters roamed the human world itself. Embar Dea's cry was picked up and echoed by Rish and the others and it circled the walls of Hell, reverberating in a dreadful consuming howl.

"Dive!" commanded Rish. "Dive!" and they went down and down, arrowing toward the waiting coils of the kuei.