The Firebird's Vengeance (11 page)

She’d have to be quick.

“Hey, Tsan Nu! Tsan Nu!”

Tsan Nu groaned, slowed, and turned. Yi Qin, daughter of Lady Yi Tang, trotted up behind her. Yi Qin was tall, and carefully groomed and wore robes of blue and red, emphasizing her high rank, as much as she was allowed, because despite the fact that Lady Yi Tang said that her father was Lord Pao, private secretary to the General of the Northern Borders,
he
had never said so.

Yi Qin was nosy. She liked to have secrets and hated anybody else having them. So the next question was predictable.

“Where’re you going?”

“Nowhere,” tried Tsan Nu.

“Come on.” Yi Qin smiled at her, and looked a lot like her mother when she did. “I’ll tell you what Li Tan told me about Master Bin.”

Yi Qin treated secrets like strings of silver. It was almost a shame she never really knew anything interesting.

“Nowhere,” repeated Tsan Nu. “I just wanted to think.”

That was a mistake. “About what?”

“Nothing.” Even as she said it, Tsan Nu knew that was another mistake.

“You’re a liar,” said Yi Qin flatly. “Tell me where you’re going or I’ll tell your tutor about how you turned all the white flowers red to make the dragon picture before the New Year festival.” It was well known Tsan Nu had the spirit gifts, and occasionally she had shown them off by freezing a pond in midsummer or putting a goldfish into a tree. Master Liaozhai frowned on these exploits and set her to learning pages and pages of new characters whenever she did it, but the looks on the other children’s faces could be worth it.

She would tell on Tsan Nu too, but Tsan Nu couldn’t let her see the scrying. She couldn’t let Yi Qin of all people know what she could really do. The girl would never leave her alone for a minute if she knew how much Tsan Nu could see when she tried.

She had to do something. Any moment now, the nurses would descend. They’d be scolded and made to play together. “Listen, Yi Qin, if you let me alone now, I’ll give you a good luck amulet. A real one. Master Liaozhai taught me how.” That wasn’t true, but Yi Qin would never know.

Yi Qin considered. “What kind of good luck?”

Greedy brat
. “Future luck,” said Tsan Nu conspiratorily. “It’ll be waiting for the time when you need it most and then … you’ll get exactly what you want.” Tsan Nu was pleased with her wording. That way if something didn’t work out for Yi Qin, Tsan Nu could just say, “It must not be the right time yet.” She could keep that up for years.

Yi Qin eyed her suspiciously. “All right,” she muttered, “but if you don’t do it, I’ll make you very sorry.” Yi Qin had lots of friends and the secrets she knew might not be interesting, but sometimes they were dangerous.

“I promise,” said Tsan Nu again. “You’ll have it by bedtime.”

Whatever else Yi Qin was, she did what she said. Showing off how much the lady she was, she walked primly back to where her coconspirators were playing “court.” Tsan Nu turned and ran, praying that the gods not decide to deal with her lie by having one of the nurses or, worse, one of the tutors catch her now.

But they did not. Tsan Nu made it to the back wall and the wild patch. It was shady back here and gnats buzzed around her ears. She swatted them away impatiently and pushed her way through the screen of brambles and nettles, ignoring the pricks and stings.

The pool was only a little wider than she was, rimmed with algae and covered over with a kind of floating moss. Tsan Nu shoved that aside with a stick until she got a patch of fairly clear brown water. The stench of decay wafted up around her, and she held her nose. Then, she knelt down, leaning out over the pool, looking at the muddy swirls, and she set aside the itching, and the stink and her anger at Yi Qin, and the crack in the temple floor, and she thought about tomorrow. Tomorrow. What would tomorrow be like? She thought about the Heart, about the great courtyard and the tower that was Ah Min’s Spear, and all the palaces around.

This wasn’t even really magic, not the weaving and shaping Master Liaozhai taught her. This was something separate, something inside her blood that was her very own.

Fixing her mind on the Heart, and on tomorrow, Tsan Nu reached inside to where her mind’s eye waited, and willed it open. She looked down into the brown, swirling water, and she saw …

Nothing.

Not darkness, not the black that came with night, or with closing one’s eyes, but nothingness. It was as if her inner eye had gone blind.

Tsan Nu pulled back, and the mood broke, and her inner vision snapped shut, there was nothing in front of her except a pond settling back toward stillness.

Tsan Nu, though, was gasping and shaking like she’d just woken up from a nightmare. Nothing. Tomorrow was nothing. The Heart was nothing. How could this be?

I should look again. I didn’t ask the right question. There can’t be nothing. There has to be something
.

But she remembered Master Liaozhai’s story about the boy who died from too much scrying. Even if he wasn’t like her, with visions that could be called without a shaping, what if she got paralyzed like he did, and all they found was her bones crouching over the pool, because she couldn’t make herself look away anymore?

There couldn’t just be
nothing
.

Still, Tsan Nu shivered. Biting her lip, she did what she always did when she was afraid. She took off her left shoe, slipped her fingers into a slit in the cotton lining, and brought out the flat, colorful amulet hidden there. It was called a
zagovor’s
heart, and when Tsan Nu traced the pattern with her finger, she could sometimes feel the subtle heart shape hidden in the layers of tight braiding.

Her father had given her this amulet, just in front of the bushes where she now hid. She had shown him her secret spot, and he had praised her. “Be obedient, Tsan Nu, but do not give them all of yourself,” he’d said seriously. “Keep something just for you and me.

“And to that end.” He’d reached in his pocket and pulled the amulet out. It was half the size of her palm, as flat as a copper coin, and braided red, black, green, and blue. “This is for you. If there is ever a time when you are truly in danger, and I mean in danger of your life, Tsan Nu — not in danger of a scolding, or of being made to practice your writing.” She’d blushed, but he’d just smiled. “But if such a time ever comes, you can use this to contact me. Listen closely,” and he had explained how to open up the magic he had locked into the weaving.

Now she held it tightly against her as if it were her favorite doll. Should she use it? With everything she’d seen and everything she hadn’t seen, was now that emergency? Father was a sorcerer, and important, not just to the Isavaltans, but to the Nine Elders as well. He could make them listen.

But slowly, Tsan Nu lowered the amulet to her lap. No. Not yet. She’d wait until tomorrow. By tomorrow, Minister Xuan would have talked to the others. By tomorrow, things would have changed. Maybe that was why she couldn’t see anything. It was all changing, maybe because of what she had already seen. Maybe it was as Master Liaozhai said, he
had
heard her, but he couldn’t do anything alone. The Nine Elders always had to talk for hours and hours before they did anything.

Tsan Nu slid the amulet back into her shoe, and slid the shoe back onto her foot. She crawled out of the thicket and dusted off her knees and elbows. Then she set off running again. She needed to find Lady Pim Ma and beg some red ribbons so she could make Yi Qin’s “lucky” amulet.

Everything would be all right tomorrow, and if it wasn’t, then she would call Father.

In the end, it was to be Earth.

The debate was long and intense, lasting from noon until twilight, but Xuan had known through it all what would be done. There was only one choice.

If the guardian had been perverted or angered, the only one who could stand against its wrath, or answer how they might heal it, was another guardian. The only question was which guardian should be called.

It was no small thing. It was never normally done, and had never been done twice within the same hundred years. The ceremony was difficult, and called for all the Nine Elders, for Heaven itself had to be touched and implored, and the life of an Elder had to be given in the transformation.

The guardian of earth was chosen because while earth was slow where fire was quick, solid where fire was ethereal, the earth could also contain fire and so they were not in direct opposition to each other. This was no battle they sought to stage. That would be an even greater blasphemy than the northerners had perpetrated. This was a sacrifice for the restoration of harmony and peace, when all other means had failed.

The transformation could only be worked at night. They all gathered now atop the tower. The moon was a silver coin in the black sky, surrounded by the pinpricks of countless stars, white, gold, and blue. All of them flashes of fire, blue white gold and red. Xuan remembered other nights, gazing up at those stars and feeling his connection with Heaven. Where there could be no water, no earth, there was yet fire, changing yet eternal.

En Lai stepped forward alone to the altar. She positioned herself on the ancient stone, waiting, rooting herself in her element, opening her heart. Xuan saw her hands tremble as she brought them together, folded in acceptance and in prayer. He remembered how it felt to stand there, alone, waiting for the end. Even knowing that Heaven waited and that life went on, it was a hard, lonesome thing.

Chi Tahn met En Lai’s eyes in silence. En Lai did not even have to nod. All there knew she had reached her moment of readiness. To wait any longer would make what must be done unbearable. They all remembered, they all at one time or another had stood on that stone.

Chi Tahn threw back his head and he began to sing. His voice was strong and pure and it went straight to Xuan’s heart, drawing him close and opening him wide. One by one his brothers and sisters added their voices to the spell, raising their magics from within and from without, drawing the essence of each element and each direction into their invisible weaving until the whole of the world was within their compass.

Xuan’s voice joined the others almost without his conscious volition. His song was needed, his element, his magic, and so it answered the call and wove itself with the others, rising into the air, sinking into the earth, reaching out to all the four outer directions and bringing them to the center.

Song and power swelled until all the air around them trembled. Then Minh, the Minister of the West, stepped forward, still singing, always singing. In his arms he bore the robe of transformation. Dull brown silk embroidered with ebony threads, it showed the interlocking plates of the shell, the creases of eternity and wisdom, the shelter and strength that were the Earth’s guardian. En Lai’s shoulders sagged beneath its weight as Minh draped it about her. Xuan put aside his wishes to comfort her, and sang on, each tone, each word, robbing En Lai of self and strength, turning her into the vessel, emptying her being to the need of Hung-Tse.

Shaiming, the Minister of Metal, stepped forward next, bearing the snub-nosed mask fashioned of gold and bronze. En Lai could no longer stand. She collapsed against Shaiming as he tied the ribbons tightly against her skull, so that her face was gone and all that remained in the moonlight was the face of the guardian. Singing that mystery, singing praise and gratitude, Shaiming lowered En Lai to the stone. The woman could not be seen anymore. There was only the shell, the great legs, the wise face, the dark eyes.

There was only the vessel to be filled.

Chi Tahn shifted the song, deepening the pitch, slowing the tempo, reaching into stone and earth where the guardian waited. Words of praise, words of pleading, words of gratitude and need. This was the greatest of all the songs. These were the words of true transformation. This was the first gift, and the last, the final duty of all who were chosen for this high office. Xuan poured himself freely into the working, spending strength, breath, and magic to shape the change, to call the guardian forth.

And nothing happened.

At first no one moved. Chi Tahn led the song still, and effort redoubled. Xuan reached within and without, bringing all his training to bear to shape the words that shaped the world. Around him, he felt the others doing the same. He had not been so close to his brothers and sisters in many years, and he gladly drew himself closer yet. En Lai lay still upon the altar, a heap of brown cloth and sparkling metals.

Cloth rustled. Eyes shifted, left and right. A note wavered. The air shivered. The song went on. Xuan shaped the words, shaped the power, but the first traces of weariness were beginning to creep in. His jaws began to ache, his breath began to catch. The weaving loosened. He could hear Chi Tahn’s voice above the others, calling and calling again. He felt the pull, but it was weaker. It no longer touched heart and soul, compelling the magics. Xuan had to push them toward Chi Tahn, as if he were moving a burden up the ramp of a ship, trying to fill a hold that was too large for what he carried. The net of their magics frayed and the power began to spill away.

En Lai moaned.

They all heard her voice, muffled by the mask. It should not have been so. En Lai should have been long gone, departed but for her final essence to help the guardian shape her body. The woman should not be there to feel weariness or pain. The moan, a purely human sound, came again, and the threads of the spell snapped as if cut by a knife.

Silence fell, and the Nine Elders stared at one another. Xuan’s heart barely remembered to beat. This was wrong. This was impossible. The great spells did not fail. They could not. They were part of the order of nature. They could no more fail to bring the guardian than the sun could fail to rise in the east.

Yet under the silence, power still thrummed. Something unspent still resonated in the air, making Xuan’s skin shiver.

On the altar, En Lai, who was only En Lai still, lifted her head. Her pale hand reached out and pushed the mask back from her face. The inert piece of metal clattered onto the stone.