The Pirate Empress (76 page)

“Dahlia,” he shouted, landing sturdily on his feet. “It is over. I have the Scimitar of Yongfang. Its blade will sever you of your power.”

The Fox Queen was silent. She approached him and rose on her hind legs, the fur on her chest and belly prickling, and gleaming like inky satin.

Instantly, she transformed into the radiant moon-haired, golden-eyed witch that Master Yun remembered from his days of the warring kingdoms—before First Emperor united them. The armed demons around her turned lax. “I am not afraid of you, Warlock,” she said. “No matter that your power grows with the death of your armies, you are still only one. I am many. And it is obvious you are terrified that the end is near. You cannot win when the only way you can increase your power is to have your own people killed.”

Master Yun struck at her with the Scimitar. She stepped back and laughed. “Lopping off my head will do nothing.”

Instantly, she transformed into the black fox. Instead of going for his throat, she attacked his legs, and toppled him to the ground. This move was unexpected, but Master Yun was still adept. He catapulted to his feet crippled though he was, and struck at her rump as she swung around. He made a further attempt with a two-handed swing, and was met with the lances of one thousand demon soldiers, fifty of which were speared into the ground to cage him.

%%%

In the breaking dawn, Zhu stood with Li on the parapet of the city wall, and squinted toward the battlefield, which was engulfed in an evil cloud. Black smoke and the stink of the roasting flesh of dead warriors clogged his air passages. “It’s working,” he said. “The Ba She and
Bai Gu Jing
are feeding on each other.”

“They are beasts after all,” Li said. “Even now, Zi Shicheng, Liao Dong and Captain Ching are cleaning up. Soon all of the monsters will be dead or they will flee.”

“Try to get some sleep now, sister, else your wound will fester. You have been fighting for a day and a night, and the gods only know what you were doing before you joined me.”

“We have all been fighting for a day and a night, and now, into another day. I can’t rest. I—” Li cut herself off so abruptly that Zhu had to look off into the battlefield to see what had stopped her words. There were still many snake-like Ba She, but they were manageable at last, as they fed upon their fellow demons, the White Bone Spirits. The latter tried everything to escape the voracious appetite of the snakes, even transforming into snakes themselves, only to find themselves in a scaly, twisting skirmish to see who could devour whom first. That was not what had Li speechless. She pulled her jaw taut, and pointed into the distance beyond the mounds of burning corpses; they had been rendered unpalatable to the flesh-eating demons. “Look beyond the smoking carcasses. Tell me what you see.”

Zhu’s eyes grew round as oranges. “Either my sight deceives me or I am going crazy.”

“Not crazy, Zhu,” Li said. “Quan warned me of such a creature. A giant. He has few brains and likely can’t be reasoned with. He might be harmless except he was seduced into the Fox Queen’s forces. He desires one thing, and one thing only. The sun.”

“Something we cannot give him.”

“See how he crushes our men, twenty per footfall? He is not even aware that he is killing so many. I doubt that he is aware that he is killing anyone at all.”

“A simpleton?” Zhu asked.

“Ignorance is always dangerous,” Li said. “If he continues on this trajectory, he will reach the city walls, and step over them as though they were a fence built out of toothpicks. He will crush the farmhouses and the merchant shops until he reaches the citadel, then he’ll demolish the Forbidden City itself.”

“How can we stop him? Look how he towers above the Ba She, and they can devour elephants, whole. He must be all of fifty feet tall.”

Li winced.

“What’s wrong, Li. Is it your shoulder? Does it pain you?”

Li shook her head. A flood of luminescence appeared out of nowhere and surrounded her. The Ghostfire. Zhu batted them away for they were obscuring his vision, but they refused to leave. Had she called them? He could almost hear them.
Hurry, hurry, hurry. No time to waste!
“Li,” he shouted. “Where are you?” Just as suddenly the phenomenon vanished. “Li?”

“Zhu, I’m all right. But I must go.”

“Go? Go where? You’ve only just arrived and I need you to help me with this giant. What did you say his name was? Kua Fu?”

“You don’t need me,” Li insisted. “But Master Yun does. I didn’t summon the Ghostfire. He did. Our grandfather is in trouble. I must go to him. You must slay the giant yourself. Better yet, constrain him. Likely, he means no harm. I doubt he knows what harm he does.”

“Then I can reason with him?”

“I don’t know, Zhu. I have never met him before. I am not learned in the ways of giants. I go now.”

%%%

Li borrowed Master Yun’s horse, the mount that Zhu had taken to the capital because of the beast’s preternatural speed. Xingbar obeyed his new mistress as though he knew she carried the blood of his master. When she arrived at the mound she was horrified to learn the direction the battle had taken. The Inner Circle with its eight regiments of demons and villainous beasts were intact. And scattered around the artifice were the corpses of Ming warriors. The young emperor and Peng were under the guardianship of
Fenghuang
and a ghost warrior, whom she recognized as Yongfang from his unnatural height and diaphanous appearance. Fucanlong, the blue dragon, wheeled high above Dahlia’s Magic Circle.

“What has happened?” Li demanded. “Where’s Master Yun?”

“You must be Lotus Lily,” the ghost soldier said.

“I am she, but I prefer the name of Li.”

Yongfang bowed. “Fucanlong has dropped your grandfather into the Fox Queen’s heinous device. I fear he is trapped or dead. We have heard nothing from him in days. The blue dragon circles above, but when he attempts a rescue, the Quilan attack him. He can’t get near enough to discover the health of the warlock.”

“Let me see for myself. Stay here with the children.”

The ghost soldier raised his dagger. “Not that way. No path leads through the demon fighters. Do you think we haven’t tried? Why do you think Master Yun chose an aerial route? Those men didn’t drop dead of boredom.”

“But I must reach him.”

“Ploughing headlong into the Circle will only get you killed. I’ve been thinking as the blue dragon has been circling. Dropping you by the same route as Master Yun can only place you in the same predicament—because she’ll see you coming. A more hidden path to reach him must exist.”

“Ma-ma,” the young emperor boy said, coming up to her and bowing. “We must do something. If I am emperor, then I must do something.”

Li looked down at the boy whose name was Wu. Why did he keep calling her Ma-ma? No time to figure that one out. She must help him become the fearless leader he was meant to be. “There is nothing for you to do yet, Majesty. Stay with Peng and the phoenix. Yongfang will watch over you.”

“But what will you do? You can’t move forward without a plan.”

“Something will come to me,” she said.

“What?”

“Your Highness,” she said, bowing with respect. “In the days to come you will become a great leader and a wise ruler. The answers are not always transparent. Sometimes, only in the hour of greatest desperation, does the road become clear.”

Wu stared at her with bright, excited eyes. “My father said I must trust you, no matter how strange you sound to me.”

“Then trust me, my young liege. By sky, river or earth, somehow I will save Master Yun and destroy the Fox Queen.” She turned to Yongfang and ordered him to bring her any maps of the terrain that Quan and Master Yun had charted. She studied these trying to find a solution to the impregnable puzzle forced upon her by Dahlia. “What are these markings?” she asked the ghost soldier. They were rings similar to the ring that marked the location of First Emperor’s tomb—the very mound they stood upon now, only much smaller.

“Those are burials of the ancient dead.”

“Like First Emperor?”

Yongfang nodded.

“And are the inhabitants of these tombs alive like yourself?” If ‘alive’ was what you could call him, she thought.

He shrugged, and his nebulous shoulders wavered. “I do not know. I don’t pretend to know how I stand outside this mound myself.”

“But if they are,” she continued, “do you know whose allegiance they represent?”

Eight small rings surrounded Dahlia’s Circle. Within her Circle was another ring. First Emperor’s mound was a large ring schematised to the south of these. Li looked across the plain where they domed as shallow hillocks. “Who lies in that ring beneath the Fox Queen’s Circle?”

“No one important,” Yongfang said. “Only a noblewoman. Her name was Lady Dai.”

“Then why did Dahlia choose that tomb on which to focus her Circle?”

“Perhaps the lady was one of her consorts, one of her worshippers? During the turbulent days of the warring states fox faeries were revered.”

“Do you think she’ll help us?”

“Even if she would, we cannot reach her.”

Li stared at the floor of the plateau, which was really the roof of First Emperor’s tomb. “Can we get inside?”

“I can take you inside as I am free to come and go as I please. The fifth rib of Dilong has released me. But what good will it do you to enter the tomb?” He paused for a moment, before a grimace ruffled his filmy face. “I see where your thoughts run. The dragon’s rib is inside the mound where the fox faerie dropped it. It’s the key to the tomb, but it will only open the gate from the exterior. What do you propose to do once you’re inside? I can help you, but only if I accompany you, and then who will protect the children?”

“We don’t need protection,” Wu said. “You must try it. Attack from underground. Catch the Fox Queen and her armies off-guard. It’s a good plan.”

Li smiled. A good plan, but only if she could burrow through the earth. “The Emperor has spoken,” she said. “Do I have a companion, Ghost Soldier? Answer swiftly.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

The Fifty-Foot Giant

Kua Fu was a giant of enormous proportions. His gargantuan feet slapped down on the battlefield, crushing tree, stone and flesh. All the time his eyes lifted to the sky and his fingers, thick as tree trunks, snapped in the air. The Imperial Army’s only reprieve was nightfall, when the great wheel of the sun sank into the horizon. Then and only then, did the giant cease his destruction. Zi Shicheng who stood at the wall beside He Zhu scowled. “What is it doing? Every weapon we use against it, it swats away like they were fleas.”

“Our armies are not what has his attention,” Zhu said, and proceeded to reiterate Li’s knowledge of Kua Fu. He was not a particularly bright giant, and thought the lights of heaven were within his reach. Perplexed by the sun’s absence at night, during the day he chased it. Alas, his leaping and chasing served no purpose, and all he managed to accomplish was a mountain of dust. The desert sands were of his making—he had drained the lakes and rivers to quench his thirst. The southern jungles—once the wooden club he carried before he dropped it from sheer exhaustion—soon took root to bloom into the mangrove trees of the coast.

“I wonder: what would he do if he caught the sun?” He Zhu asked hypothetically.

“He can’t catch it,” Zi Shicheng replied. “Anyone who believes the sun is his to catch, thinks too much of himself. Only the gods can touch it, and they don’t dare.”

“That is his weakness. He thinks too highly of himself. Either that or he is too stupid to know better. And so, we shall give him his desire. We will fashion him an orb so brilliant and beautiful he won’t know the difference. We will make it out of brass. Send orders to collect those shields that are scattered all over the field. And bring me oil, lots of it. Today we build the sun!”

He Zhu set his men to polishing the brass until the lustre hurt his eyes.

Fifteen hundred shields lay buffed and gleaming, fixed into a massive shining ball. Now what? How did they suspend it in the sky so that the behemoth might catch it and go away? He Zhu had not thought this far. He was hoping the colossal simpleton would assume the sun had fallen from the heavens, pick up the enormous, shiny ball and then leave. But the cold, late autumn sun—the true celestial orb—shone on the city, perchance to laugh. And now, the giant was getting too close to the city walls, its eyes focused above, and the shining brass ball ignored.

Out on the battlefield Liao Dong and Captain Ching massacred what remained of the White Bone Spirits and the Ba She, when the sky suddenly blackened. The remaining demons reared their heads, as though they just realized they had been duped into eating each other.

“NO, don’t let them escape,” Zhu cried. “Go after them.”

Zhu was about to make chase when the deep shadow over the city flapped its wings, and he looked up to see the underbelly of an enormous, scaled creature sail over his head to the battlefield. His jaw dropped, and Zi Shicheng went speechless. It could be nothing but a dragon. With the head of a horned lizard and the body of a finned, six-legged serpent, it dived toward their brass sun, gripped it with its bright yellow claws and hoisted it from the ground into the heavens. At the same instant a cloud covered the true sun, allowing a loose ray to strike the gleam of metal, catching Kua Fu’s eye, and the giant turned, as did the dragon, in the direction of the Grand Canal and ultimately the sea.

“Who are you?” Zhu shouted to the snapping, red dragon tail as it fishtailed up to heaven.

“I am Tianlong of the sun.”

%%%

It was an airless, vacuum-like rush that sent Li to the bottom of First Emperor’s tomb.

She looked up just in time to see the ceiling clamp shut. Darkness settled, and along with it the feeling of utter despair. The choice was made and she could not unmake it. All that was left to her was to move forward. Yongfang’s nebulous form appeared beside her, and in the gloom of blue light that radiated from the vault he shed a pale luminescence of his own. Li had the bamboo scroll with the map of the rings, and showed the geography of the plain. The tomb where Lady Dai was buried lay directly beneath the center of the Fox Queen’s Magic Circle. According to this map, it was due north.

“The passages lead some distance under ground,” Yongfang said. “After that some sort of key is necessary.”

“And if we can’t find the key?” Li asked, re-rolling the scroll and stuffing it into her sash.

“Then I can leave whenever I wish, but you will be stuck down here for eternity.”

“Surely you could find someone topside to dig me out?”

“Do you know how deep this tomb runs? Digging by mere mortals could take years.”

“Then we must find the key to open Lady Dai’s tomb. I only hope that the fifth rib of Dilong will serve the same purpose. How do you know Jasmine dropped it here, Yongfang?”

“Because when I left the mound the day she released the Night Guards Army, I saw her dispose of the key just before the gate shut. She wished to ensure Master Yun’s entrapment by locking it inside with him, but what she did not bargain on was the shapeshifting blue dragon saving him. As you recall, the key opens from the outside of the mound, not the inside. And this concerns me. How will you open the crypt of Lady Dai when we are already beneath the ground?”

“We may be below the ground, but we are still outside her tomb,” Li said. “My senses tell me that the logic of the dragon’s magic works this way.”

They passed through a corridor where the shattered remnants of pottery soldiers once stood. Along the northern and southern rims of the next vault pieces of terracotta chest plates, battle tunics and war boots littered the floor. Yongfang was a seasoned guide, having spent a thousand years entombed, and he continued until he reached the post of the former rearguard. Further on, he entered a black opening and Li followed him inside a T-shaped vault. Again they were confronted with broken pottery. Another hundred meters and they entered a third vault, a concave polygon, smaller than the others. Li stood along the wall, noticing two wing rooms, which Yongfang described as the seat of the Military Command.

A
rap
sounded, softly, and then another, louder this time. After a while, all was quiet and Li turned to locate her companion. He lifted his hand for silence, aiming a finger in the direction of the knocking. Dead silence ensued. Li wondered if she had erred, but it was too late for regrets. Three sharp
raps
came from somewhere ahead of them. The ground beneath her feet began to move. “This way!” he urged, and she bunched her arms to her sides to protect the scroll and her sword, just as the earth shifted, and a strange sensation consumed her. She was whisked forward, and a vacuum, a horizontal wind tunnel shot her into a labyrinth, and then stopped before she crashed into a wall.

Li stretched her eyes against the dark and saw tunnels, multitudes of openings into passageways. “What just happened?” she demanded.

“We have awakened the inhabitants of the other tombs. They are asking to be let out.”

“Who is in them, and if we release them, will they help us?”

“Only if they have reason to help us,” Yongfang said. “The question is: Do you wish to take the chance?”

Li had no army to aid her in a battle against hostile ghosts should they turn out to be thus, and she had no time to convince them to side with her. It was safer to keep them caged. Her best bet was to approach the Lady Dai. At least she was only
one
person. Li’s first priority was to slice off the tails of the Fox Queen, before she could even consider the rescue of Master Yun. And that road led through the crypt of Lady Dai.

“These tunnels,” Yongfang said, “lead to the various tombs. And look there. Isn’t that what you were seeking?”

Li saw the pale gleam. “The fifth rib of Dilong!”

Towering over Li, Yongfang reached down and lifted the dragon’s bone.

%%%

Master Yun’s cage was five feet in diameter. He raised his hands to try a windblast to topple the spears of his prison, but to no effect. He called upon the earth to rise and rip the bars of his cage apart, but it refused to hear him. Finally, he slashed the Scimitar against the shafts only to send sparks of lighting ricocheting onto himself. The Fox Queen was powerful indeed. Over his head, Fucanlong circled.

“What a sad ending for one so long-lived,” Dahlia taunted him.

“I am not dead yet,” Master Yun said. “Why don’t you slice off my head and be done with it? Why the indignity of caging me like an animal?”

“Because you are my bait. I want you dead, but more than that I want the one they call the Pirate Empress. She’s your granddaughter, isn’t she? My kit Jasmine once spoke of a prophecy.”

Master Yun stiffened, keeping his facial muscles very still. “I know of it and already it is coming to pass.”

Dahlia laughed, the tinkle of her laughter sounding very familiar. “You know nothing. Jasmine saw a pirate queen with the one who would return the Middle Kingdom to its natural state. Well, who is to say what its natural state should be? You see, Master Yun, I must destroy the one they call the Pirate Empress. As long as she lives, there will be the possibility of the one who obliterates my world.” She chuckled at the look on his face. “No, Warlock, it is not Wu, the son of Brigade General Chi Quan, nor is it Lao, the spawn of Admiral Fong, the White Tiger. This one—is not yet born.”

%%%

The labyrinth was a vacuum of tunnels that went neither here nor there, and yet they were somewhere because now they stood before a blank wall.
Is this the end?
How Li wished she could cheat death. How she wished she could cheat life. Was desperation all that was left to her? Her heartfelt advice to the young emperor resounded in her mind.
Sometimes, only in the hour of greatest desperation does the road become clear.

The bone in Yongfang’s arms began to glow yellow. A crack formed near the ceiling and split down the length of the wall like a lightning bolt. The wall was thick, composed of three layers: the hillock’s natural red clay, a protective layer of white clay, and a thin layer of charcoal, like the tomb had been burned. Li choked as the vault released two thousand years of toxic air. She gasped and coughed and, after a few moments, could breathe though she knew not how or whence the new air came.

The tomb was divided into four, rectangular, pinewood compartments, each brimming with exquisite items. She estimated there to be at least a thousand pieces. A coffin was nested at the center, and there was no sign of anyone, ghost or otherwise. Li glanced up at her companion, but he offered no explanation. She looked to the ceiling, then back at the dragon’s rib, but whatever magic it contained for opening doors stopped here. The crack resealed, even as Li lunged to wedge it ajar, and the glowing bone glowed no more.

Li returned to the luxurious grave goods scattered all over the floor. She lifted a glistening red and black lacquer cup, matching wine containers, and boxes for storing cosmetics. A golden, silk gown embroidered with dogwood blossoms and a phoenix soaring over clouds caught her attention. Who was this noblewoman that she should be buried with such riches? Li slipped on a pair of delicate fingerless gloves, and picked up a spice-filled silk sachet, then dropped it when a curious wooden figurine captured her eye.

“A carving of a servant,” Yongfang explained. “See how the red lips are pursed in eternal mourning? And those statues on the floor where you found her, they are musicians.”

She saw that the wooden figures in question played wind instruments. “Enough!” She dropped the figurine, ripped the gloves from her hands and stood up. “Where is she? Where is the owner of all this wealth?” Li stared at the coffin in the center. It was draped with a seven-foot-long, T-shaped silk painting of fantastical animals and gods juxtaposed to a very flattering image of what must be Lady Dai herself. Would the lady tremble if she knew just how real those creatures were? Was she still inside that slim coffin?

Then Li noticed something she had failed to see earlier. The vignette was encapsulated within a stylized painting of a white dragon. “Shenlong,” she whispered. “The Rain Dragon.” Underneath the dragon’s black claws was the word
xinqi
.

“To keep a promise,” Yongfang said, speaking its meaning like it mattered.

“Between loved ones,” Li added, wondering aloud what significance the epitaph could possibly have. Her eyes skimmed the chamber and she realized that most of the goods were decorated with a stylized cloud motif. Clouds were vessels by which one ascended to heaven. Only gods went to heaven. Was this woman a goddess?