Dragons on the Sea of Night (28 page)

Then, as Tokagé reared back to attack again, she saw the filmy reddish vapor leaking from between the neck-plates of his armor. So I
did
damage him, she thought. Perhaps, knowing this, Kaijikan left him here, ill and dying.

Tokagé swung at her with his longsword, the blade's edge cutting along one wing as she dived in again, bloody talons extended. They slashed across his breastplate with such force that he was flung clear of his luma, who reared up, baring its teeth in terror. One of the warlord's ankles was caught in his leather stirrup and as the luma wheeled, galloping away from its attacker, it dragged him along the ground until, as it leapt a line of stones, his ankle came free.

Tokagé lay on his back, his scored salamander helm askew, the armor plates across his torso pried apart. Still, even half-stunned, one leg fractured in several places, he had the presence of mind to wield his sword. Chiisai, screaming as she came in for the kill, was almost sliced in twain, but she twisted at the last instant, and the point of the sword punctured the membrane between two wing bones.

She landed upon Tokagé with all her fore-talons fully extended. With the force of her dive behind her, they pierced damaged armor, plunging into skin and flesh. Tokagé screamed, arching up as the talons went clear through him. His face was a rictus of agony and his arms beat a tattoo against the ground.

Now Chiisai's wings beat in rhythm – the kill-rhythm she had heard the Dai-San speak of when describing his Kaer'n. The tempo increased as shivers went through the dying warlord. His face was drained of blood, his black eyes rapidly losing focus. Chiisai tightened her grip upon him and his body shook in its final death-spasm.

At the moment of his passing, there came an evil hissing from the rent in his throat, and the reddish vapor began to coalesce. Phaidan, the satellite of Chaos was materializing.

The vapor had become a colloid – particles suspended in a kind of liquid – and these particles were colliding, merging, doubling and redoubling, forming clusters, colonies, countries, continents of substance that, abruptly, startlingly became solid, three-dimensional.

And, as Chiisai watched, transfixed with horror, this red substance crouched upon the corpse of the traducer, Tokagé, feeding upon its flesh and bones like a berserk cannibal until there was nothing left of the warlord save tattered banners of sere skin, which shriveled up and blew away like tumbleweeds along the black, rocky earth. The empty armor squealed and groaned beneath the weight metastasizing upon it.

‘
O, the agony!
' Phaidan cried and, turning its baleful gaze upon her, said, ‘
I will return the favor – now!
'

And it leapt upon her. The old Chiisai – the Bujun warrior, though virtually fearless – would have been helpless before the Chaos satellite's attack. But the old Chiisai was dead, shed like Tokagé's wrinkled skin in the eternal maelstrom of Chaos. She was part Chaos now, and she used that part of her, lifting her long, horned head, baring long, pearl-colored fangs, that clashed and sparked as Phaidan hurled its chimerical form against her.

Fifty tentacles, then one hundred more erupted from the shifting body, curling around and around her, pinioning her wings to her scaly sides, holding her rear legs so that her talons extruded into the chill black earth. Chiisai struggled with her forelegs, working to get them inside the snaking tentacles, the razor-sharp talons severing them as she went. But for every one she sliced, two others appeared to take its place until Phaidan appeared as an enormous head from whose scalp sprang a forest of tentacles, thick as hair.

Then these tentacles themselves began to metamorphose, ophidian heads emerging from their ends, jaws opening wide, fangs bared, forked tongues flicking out to taste the scent of the prey. Chiisai ignored these, focusing on the head itself, trying to lay it open with her talons. Instead, more and more serpents writhed upward from the scalp, to be slashed in two, and to rise again three- and four-fold from the ball-like head.

She was tiring and the serpents were tightening their grip upon her wings, preventing the kill-rhythm. And now, here and there, in increasing numbers, the serpents' fangs sank into her flesh, trying to suck her life-force. When that failed to weaken her further, six of them twined together above her head, spiraling upward, stiffening, until they formed a great sword that began to slash down at her skull.

Chiisai opened her mouth and a tongue coated with glittering fire stabbed out, cutting through serpent and vein, plunging directly into the core of the Chaos beast.

As one, all the serpents screamed, their heads arcing back into a kind of protective sphere. But it was too late and in clusters they slithered away to a jelly-like substance, then returned to the red vapor, wisps taken by the wind.

Who are you?
Phaidan cried. I
know all Kaer'n but I know you not
.

I am that I am
, Chiisai said, driving her tongue deeper into its core.
You know me
.

Who? Who?
Phaidan shrieked as it writhed, impaled.

I am that I am
.

Pale fire rippled from Chiisai's tongue, engulfing Phaidan piece by piece, incinerating it in sections, an excruciating way to die – if, indeed, death was the correct term for the termination of a Chaos creature.

There was a leathery rustling as Chiisai's wings unfurled and, fluttering in the wind, beat the air in the instinctive kill-rhythm. So that is what I have become, she thought. A Kaer'n.

So she rested, the wind rustling along her wings as it did through the nearby cryptomeria. Tokagé's fantastically worked armor had rusted away as if it had been left to rot for a century. It lay like the skeleton of a time-ravaged beast, rattling and moaning as the wind swept through it.

Chiisai closed her eyes. It was difficult adjusting. For one thing, she no longer had lungs; she breathed via capillary action through the complex pores of her hide. For another, her blood – more accurately, her life's fluid – was pumped by a triple heart, encased within a well-protected bone cavity at the back of her long skull, and she still found the rapid beats of it disturbing. The list was virtually endless, and each change took painstaking accommodation.

A shadow passed over her and she looked up. Clouds were occluding the sun and the chill was back in the air. Perhaps another snow squall was on its way in off the ocean.

‘So this is how it has ended for you.'

Chiisai turned her head on her long, articulated neck, saw Kaijikan floating toward her. She was smiling. ‘When I set the trap, when I used the damaged Tokagé – the Tokagé
you
made useless – as bait I must say I never expected a beast to take it.'

‘I am not a beast,' Chiisai said.

‘No, of course not,' Kaijikan said as she approached. ‘Four legs, a tail, a dragon's head, scales and horns wherever you look. Not a beast at all.'

‘What beast speaks?'

Kaijikan's smile widened into a grin. ‘My dear, all
my
beasts are as articulate as I am.'

‘What beast thinks as a human?'

The Keeper of Souls stood in front of Chiisai and laughed in her face. ‘Is that what you believe? How naive. How could you when you are no longer human?'

‘I am that I am.'

‘That kind of mumbo-jumbo might have worked with Tokagé – what was he anyway but a receptacle? It might even have worked with Phaidan – what was it anyway but a satellite? But it will not work with me. I know who and what you have become, and believe me when I tell you that you are a beast, an evolutionary dead-end that cannot reproduce. Like all your kind you are useless; neither of one world nor another.' She made signs in the air. ‘You have cheated death once, I will give you that. But I promise you, you will live to regret that feat.' Runes building in the ether. ‘Because whatever life remains to you is
mine
.'

Chiisai, who was sick of this arrogance, tried to move against Kaijikan. To her astonishment, she remained immobile. Neither muscle nor nerve would respond to the commands her brain sent out. She was stuck, rooted to the black ground, a dragon set in stone.

Kaijikan, grinning still, took her time walking around Chiisai. ‘You see, I will not regret Tokagé's demise, after all. Because now I have you – my own personal Kaer'n – to do my bidding. I had planned to use the reanimated warlord to murder the Kunshin, but think, my dear, how much more delectable will be my revenge when his daughter does it instead.'

‘Welcome,' the bear said, its fur bristling. ‘We have been expecting you.' Bjork had transformed into the male ursus as Sardonyx and Hamaan had come over the rise.

Moichi, wondering how they had ever traversed the dangers of the Khashm without the help of a Shakra, said, ‘I hope you were not worried about me.'

‘I wasn't,' Sardonyx said softly. ‘I knew where you were and whom you were with.' She rubbed Ouwlmy between the ears just as Bjork had done. ‘How are you, sweetheart? Isn't Moichi wonderful?'

‘He is the one,' Ouwlmy said.

‘Yes. He is.' Sardonyx bent down, kissed the Shakra on the cheek. ‘I have missed you, beautiful one.'

As Ouwlmy tossed her head and snorted in pleasure, Moichi said, ‘You know each other?'

Sardonyx threw her arms wide and spun like a giddy little girl. ‘This was where I learned my sorcery, Moichi. It is Shinju magic I perform.'

Moichi turned to Bjork. ‘Is this true?'

The bear nodded. ‘I do not practice my mother's art but I passed it on to Sardonyx.'

So that is how they passed unscathed through the treacherous Khashm, Moichi thought.

‘What is all this?' Hamaan said, striding up. ‘Dragons in the fen, talking luma, all manner of sorcery flying about? And now an intelligent bear. Who – or more accurately –
what
are you, sir?'

‘I am Bjork,' the bear said. ‘Last of the Shinju.'

‘A Shinju!' Hamaan's eyes lit up. ‘If I am dreaming, do not wake me up!' He took Bjork's paw in his hand, pumped it enthusiastically. ‘You are the answer to all my prayers! And, so hard by the Mountain Sin'hai, the home of the God of all Iskamen, it is fitting that you come to our aid.'

‘I beg your pardon?' Bjork said.

‘White Lotus, man!' Hamaan cried. The light of the fanatic had once again taken possession of his eyes. ‘You are its guardian, you know all its secrets. You will turn the tide for us!' In an instant, a small skinning knife was in his hand, its blade held across the bear's throat. ‘I'll warrant you will cease trading with the Adenese now, won't you?'

‘I imagine so,' Bjork said calmly. But his liquid brown eyes warned the others not to make a move. ‘Especially since I have done no trading with the Adenese.'

‘No? Then who do you sell your harvest of White Lotus to?'

‘I cannot continue to talk at the point of a knife.'

Hamaan moved the edge of the blade inward a fraction. ‘You will do what I say, when I say. Is that clear?'

Hamaan gasped as the massive ursine outline wavered, collapsing in upon itself. In his place stood a beautiful woman with flowing red hair. Her eyes staring into his, she grasped his wrist, flipping it over so that Hamaan was bent over double, and kept on twisting until the knife fell to the ground. Then she let go.

‘Yes,' Bjork said. ‘It is very clear.'

‘What madness is this?' Hamaan said, rubbing his wrist. ‘Are you man, beast or woman? Or is all this an illusion?'

‘In point of fact,' Bjork said, ‘I am half-Shinju and half-Syrinxian. This is the truth, Hamaan.' She lifted a long arm toward the storm-wreathed summit of the Mountain Sin'hai. ‘Now, before us and before your God, it is time you spoke the truth.'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘Did you think I would not find out? Did you think that the death of a Shakra would go unnoticed? Or unpunished?'

Hamaan's face screwed up as if he were inhaling a foul stench. ‘What nonsense are you spouting?'

‘Tell him, Ouwlmy,' Bjork said. ‘Tell them all.'

‘Since summer, two raids have been made to the same White Lotus harvest ground, on the extreme eastern edge of the Khashm,' Ouwlmy said. ‘After we masticate the root to paste, it must dry in the sun for forty-eight hours. Two such harvests were taken before full refining could be done. In the second raid, a Shakra was slaughtered.'

‘And who was responsible for these raids? For the death of the Shakra?' Bjork said as she stared at Hamaan. When he remained silent, she pointed. ‘Fe'edjinn carried out the raid. Elite, highly skilled shock troops under this man's direct command.' Bjork stood in front of Hamaan. ‘The truth, man. Before God and your brother.'

‘Lies.' Hamaan coolly turned to Moichi. ‘Can't you see he is covering his dealings with the Adenese?'

‘Oh, Al Rafaar got their White Lotus, all right,' Bjork said, ‘but it was a Fe'edjinn operative who sold it to them.'

‘What?' Moichi cried.

‘Talk about outlandish accusations,' Hamaan said. ‘No one would believe that.'

‘Just as they would not believe you had your own sister murdered.'

Hamaan's face drained of all color. ‘I will kill you for that.'

‘I know you will try,' Bjork said. She held out the ring that she had given to Jud'ae Annai-Nin so many years ago, the ring Moichi had returned to her today. ‘Take this, Hamaan. Hold it tightly in your right fist.'

Hamaan stared at it as if it were a poisonous serpent. ‘I will do no such thing.'

‘Yes, you will,' Bjork said. ‘For in a moment we will be confronting the truth. If, as you say, I am lying then you have nothing to fear. Quite the contrary, you will be exonerated.'

Moichi took a step toward him. ‘Do it, Hamaan.'

‘This is a trick, an illusion. She–'

‘No illusion,' Sardonyx said. She turned to Moichi. ‘I guarantee it.'