Dragon and Phoenix (47 page)

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Authors: Joanne Bertin

BOOK: Dragon and Phoenix
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The poor quarter of Jedjieh
was threaded with narrow canals doubling as stinking trails through the warrens of poverty. Dressed as he was in the foul-weather garments borrowed from the hostel’s porter—voluminous grass cape and a broad-brimmed hat to hide his foreign features and clothing—Taren had no fear of being attacked or even noticed. Why should one of the numberless poor attract attention?
Still, he hurried through the rainy evening. He could not take the chance of being gone too long; the pretext of searching the market for quala root for the old bard’s cough was not to be abused. He patted the pouch hanging from his belt, running fingers over the hard lump of root he’d purchased from the shop of herbs not far from the inn. A pity they’d been out of ague bark for him. A shiver that was not from the rainy chill danced in his bones.
He found the house he sought and stopped before it. The door was the only opening at street level, no doubt heavily barred on the inside; windows in this part of Jedjieh were set high, well out of the reach of thieves. These were no different, and shuttered now against the rain. Still, he saw faint gleams of light peeping between the thin bamboo slats when he stepped back a few paces.
Taren pulled the cord. From somewhere inside he heard the soft ringing of a bell. He pulled it twice more, paused, then twice more again.
Silence. Taren wiped his forehead; the skin felt hot and dry even in this wet. Then came the sound of feet scuffling down the stairs. He heard a wheezing cough, then a scraping that told of heavy bars shifting. The door swung open, and a hand bearing a paper lantern appeared. Next came the wizened face of an old woman. “Who is it?” she demanded, squinting into the darkness.
Taren pushed the brim of his hat back so that the light of the lantern fell upon his face.
“Baisha! You’ve returned!” the old woman gasped.
“Just so. Now get out of my way, foolish one. I must send a message to Lord Jhanun and I don’t have much time.” He pushed by her and cast hat and grass cloak onto a nearby bench.
“The writing brushes and inkstone are in the first room,” she wheezed after him as he climbed the curving stairs. “There are strips of paper already prepared.”
“Good. There’s no time to waste.”
His teeth chattering now, Taren hastened to the room. By the far wall was an old lacquered table, splints around two of its legs, the pitiful castoff of some wealthy household. The poor found a use for everything in Jehanglan.
But shabby as the table was, the brushes and inkstone upon it were of the finest quality. So were the thin strips of paper cut to fit around a pigeon’s leg. There were even strips of heavier oiled paper to protect a message against weather such as this night’s. By them lay a scattering of silk threads, blue to show that the messages they tied came from Jedjieh.
 
Xiane rode into the courtyard at nightfall and looked up at the elaborate building that towered over him. His great grandfather had built it as a “simple hunting lodge.” Hah. It was so big, as Xiane remembered from childhood, he was afraid of getting throroughly, and frighteningly, lost in it.
Hunting lodge, indeed. Palace was more like it. Still, as far as imperial residences went, it was small, and better yet, relatively isolated and private. A perfect place for a guest that Xiane did not want everyone to know about. Not just yet, anyway.
Xiane swung down from his horse and tossed the reins into the hands of a bowing groom. With a wave of his hand, he dismissed his escort of soldiers. The house steward came to meet him.
“General V’houn is within?” Xiane asked.
“Yes, Phoenix Lord. So is your other guest. They await your coming.”
Xiane nodded. He pulled his riding gloves off and absently slapped them against his thigh, raising a puff of dust.
Phoenix knew he didn’t want to do this. But he had to; he had no choice. Squaring his shoulders, Xiane walked grimly to the door. First he would bathe, rest, and eat.
And then … He would see.
 
“Where the hell is Taren?” Linden said. He paused by the window for what seemed the hundredth time in the last candlemark. And as he had done every other time, he opened the shutter and looked out into the rain. “He should have been back long ago.”
“Perhaps the nearest simpler’s stall didn’t have what he needed,” Raven offered. He fed the fire in the brazier another lump of charcoal.
“Taren did say he might have to search for it,” said Lleld, “because not all herbalists have it.”
They sat in the little sleeping chamber Raven shared with Otter—in the one chair, on the floor, at the foot of the bed. The bard lay half-propped up on the bed, sipping weak tea to soothe his throat, raw from coughing.
From her spot on the floor Maurynna said, “But that was well before dusk. It’s nearly full night now.”
“Just so,” Linden said. “I don’t like this.” He jammed his thumbs into his wide leather belt in frustration.
Said Jekkanadar, “And we’ve missed our chance to look for him ourselves beyond this area.”
“What do you mean?” Linden asked, suddenly alert. “‘Beyond this area?’ We were told we were not to leave the hostel at night at all.”
Jekkanadar shook his head. “I talked a bit with Brinn, the man with the little monkey, Toli. He told me that even as outsiders we may go beyond this small area around the docks; not very far, true, and only during daylight. After dark, we’re confined here to this quarter. He and some of the others have been out, ah, seeing the sights, now and again since they got here about two tendays ago.”
Who has the right of it?
Linden wondered.
Taren or Brinn? And either way, what are the Jehangli so afraid of that they confine outsiders to certain quarters?
“Linden, who told you that we couldn’t go out at night?” Maurynna asked.
He answered, “Taren. He told Lleld and me that it’s forbidden to leave the hostel after dark.” Shrugging, he said, “Perhaps it’s changed since he was last here.”
“Would the innkeeper send someone to look for Taren?” Otter rasped.
“Save your voice,” Lleld said, turning from her perch on the foot of the bed to glare at him.
“I’ll go see,” said Jekkanadar, and left.
When he returned, he reported, “Our host won’t go. Nor would he send for the city guard when I asked him to. The impression I got is that he’s somehow considered responsible for us. I’ll wager he wouldn’t want the city guard to know that one of ‘his’ foreigners is on the loose.”
Linden peered out the window again. “We’ll give Taren a while longer,” he said. “Then I want to look for him as far as we’re allowed. He may have just had to look farther afield than he thought, or he may be in some kind of trouble.”
 
To Xiane’s frustration, Kirano refused to interpret the significance of the giant serpent.
“In time, my lord, in time,” the old scholar said as he poured tea.
V’Choun met Xiane’s frustrated look, smiled slightly, and shrugged as if to say,
humor him.
Xiane sighed, took up his cup, and leaned back on his cushions. V’Choun did the same.
At last Kirano ceased his endless puttering with the teapot and said, “So tell me, Lord of the Four Quarters, what you know of the Phoenix that you owe your throne to.”
Why, Xiane wondered, had he asked
that?
Kirano settled himself more comfortably upon his cushions. He smiled gently; immediately a thousand wrinkles sprang into being. Save for his long grey mustaches and wispy chin beard, he looked, Xiane thought, like one of the carved, dried apples that poor children used for the heads of their dolls. A comforting face for a man who asked disturbing questions; questions that had earned banishment.
“You know it as well as I,” Xiane countered.
“Humor an old man whose wits wander these days,” Kirano said. His eyes were anything but those of a feeble-minded dodderer. Instead they watched him with a hawklike intensity.
Grumbling, and feeling like a student again, Xiane dutifully recited, “Michero, the last of the northern emperors, held the Lotus Throne of his ancestors in an iron hand. By his will, the dragons ravaged the land, and the land bled and died.
“His lords begged my august ancestor, Xilu, to save them from the emperor and his dragons, for Xilu was the only noble strong enough, brave enough, and righteous enough to win the favor of Heaven and defeat the vile emperor. At first Xilu refused, for he was at heart a simple man. But the lords—and even the common people—begged him unceasingly to take the throne. But Xilu was a man of peace and he knew such a course meant war.
“Overwhelmed by their demands, Xilu fled into the wilderness so that he might meditate upon the proper path to take. At the advice of his brother Gaolun’s Oracle, he went to the forbidden mountain of Rivasha, where the phoenix built its pyres. With him went Gaolun, he who became the first nira, and the Oracle.”
Xiane paused and drank some tea. The truth was, he’d always hated this part of his lessons. Again and again and yet again had his tutors hammered into him tales of the greatness, the glorious sacrifice of Xilu the Beneficent until Xiane, crumbling under the weight of such an ancestor, wanted to scream. For he, the son of a mere Zharmatian concubine taken in war, had had no real worth. So had they told him a thousand, thousand times until he’d believed it.
No worth, that is, until his only brothers—both sons of the First Concubine—were executed along with their mother for plotting against the old emperor.
Xiane stared down at the delicate cup clenched in his hands, a cup with golden phoenixes sporting around it. A cup that only the emperor, and perhaps his favorites, might drink from. His cup.
He went on. “But when they reached there and descended into the bowl of the dead volcano of Rivasha, they found that it was the time of the phoenix’s death and arising. They knelt before it, overwhelmed by its beauty, and fearing for their lives, yet knowing those lives were properly forfeit. They had broken the law.
“But the Phoenix looked kindly upon them and merely bade them witness its rebirth. So Xilu, Gaolun, and the Oracle watched as the Phoenix laid the last sticks of fragrant wood upon its pyre. Their hearts ached to think of the death of such beauty as the Phoenix settled upon the pyre and allowed the enchanted fire to fall from its feathers upon the logs.”
Another sip of tea. “The wood burst into flames. And because the fire was the Phoenix’s own, it also blazed up. They wept as they watched it die.
“But as they watched it burn into ash, a voice like nothing they’d ever heard before, a voice of unearthly beauty, rang in their minds. It was the phoenix, and because of their tears, and because the land of Jehanglan was dying under the rule of the wicked emperor and his dragons, it would aid them. Xilu, because of his righteousness, would become the next emperor of Jehanglan. Gaolun, ever devoted to his elder brother, would become the first high priest of the phoenix. The phoenix would seal itself inside the sacred mountain, lending its power to them in exchange for the worship of the people.
“And that,” Xiane said, drawing a deep breath, “is how the Rule of the Phoenix came to Jehanglan.” Pleased with himself, he drank the last of his tea, cold now; he had remembered everything and told it, he thought, very well.
“No,” Kirano said, shattering Xiane’s pleasure. “That is not how the Rule of the Phoenix came to Jehanglan. It is but a lie. Your father would never let me tell you the truth. Xilu was a warlord, greedy and ambitious, and his brother an equally greedy user of magic—the sort of magic that is forbidden in Jehanglan since their time. The Phoenix never consented to be used. It is a prisoner.”
The cup fell from Xiane’s hand and shattered on the floor. He stared numbly at it. From one snowy-white fragment a golden phoenix’s head stared back at him. “I—I don’t believe you,” he stuttered as he pushed himself to his feet.
“You will.”
The calm certainty struck Xiane to the heart. He fled from the truth in Kirano’s face and all that it meant.
 
Taren ground the stick of ink against the stone, mixed the resultant powder with water and dipped the tiny brush into it. Steadying his shaking right hand with his left, Taren wrote as clearly as he could upon the tiny paper strip.
Meet at Rhampul. The troupe with
—
His hand shook uncontrollably as he wrote the character for “horses.” Muttering a curse, he examined it, decided it could still be read. But now the
shaking fever had him in such a grip that he dared not write more lest he smear the entire message. It was no matter; he’d warn in person whichever lieutenant Lord Jhanun sent that he’d been forced to teach the outlanders Jehangli, and that the Dragonlords, at least, had been terrifyingly apt pupils.
Taren pressed his thumb first against the wet inkstone, then at the end of the message, getting as much of it upon the paper as he could. He examined it. Good; the impression was a clear one. Lord Jhanun would recognize it. He blew gently on the ink to dry it.

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