Golden Daughter (56 page)

And then, suddenly, there she was. Through of the maelstrom of flame she walked, and her face was pale and white, and her hair was long and shining. Enormous and beautiful beyond words to describe . . . and yet the red rage of her children was enough to make her seem insipid, small, and dull even as she paced across the sky. She looked around her with eyes too full of emotions Jovann had never felt, and he realized that even now she sang.

But her song was not the Song it had been. Rather than the Song of the Universe, the binding of all worlds, the great, ringing, joyous praise, Hulan sang:

Why are you doing this?

Why do you allow this to happen?

Why? Why?

Why?

At first Jovann believed that she addressed the Dragon himself, who loomed over her as huge as a mountain, his wings sweeping in curtains of flame to surround her. But Hulan did not see the Dragon. She gazed upon those monsters who had been her children, rendered so horrible, so gross, so evil—she gazed upon her remaining young who desperately flocked toward her, crying out for her to protect them. But though she put out her arms to them, they could not reach her. Even as they fled to her, more of them fell, burning, and were transformed.

If I but knew my fault,
said Hulan. She did not speak in words, or if she did, they were not words Jovann understood. But he knew the truth of what she asked as surely as if he asked it himself. Indeed he felt his own mouth forming words not his own.

“If I but understood! If I only knew why! What have I done to deserve this?”

Did I misunderstand? Did I mistake the Song you gave me? I thought you sang to me!

I sang back to you!

“I sang back to you . . .” Jovann whispered, and sagged to the ground, his forehead pressed against the hammer. But he forced his gaze upward once again. For now the most dreadful sight of all played out before his mortal vision, and though he believed he must die to see it, see it he would.

At a roared command of the Dragon, the red, ravening beasts that had once been shining stars closed in upon their mother. They grabbed her with their teeth, tearing into her shining form as though she were clad in flesh. They dragged her across the sky, and she made no protest, made no struggle, for they were still her children. Jovann screamed when he saw that they dragged her straight for the Gold Gong, for he believed he would be consumed in the fire of those monsters.

But the fire did not touch him. It was as though all of this took place in a realm beyond him, beyond his ability to reach. So he went on living, forced to observe though he would have torn out his own eyes rather than see what transpired.

The nearer she came, the smaller she seemed, and soon Hulan looked no more great or powerful than any woman. Indeed she looked to Jovann very like his own mother, only white and still shimmering with some faded memory of her former glory. The monster unicorns holding her flung her up against the gong.

The gong rang out its second great
DOOM.
And this broke the last of the Song, so that when the reverberations finally faded, all that remained was—

Silence.

Chains were placed upon Hulan’s wrists and ankles, around her neck. She was spread out like a star herself across the surface of the gong, her hair falling over her face. There she hung, even as the pain of the gong’s sounding rattled through her.

The Dragon crawled across the sky, scattering stars as he came. Fire fell from his mouth as though he salivated. “Hymlumé,” he said, addressing the Moon by her ancient name, “your Song is broken. Will you now despair?”

With colossal effort she raised her head. She looked into the Dragon’s face.

She said nothing.

“Very well,” said the Dragon and he addressed himself to the red monsters on all sides. “Do what you will,” he told them.

A monster stepped forward. Unquenchable red fire consumed its body, but still a sheen of blue could be seen beneath the red. It paced uneasily toward the gong, tossing its head, stamping its cloven feet. The Moon lifted her gaze and met that of her former child. But she did not see the monster it had become. Her eyes, glazed over though they were in terror and tragedy, still perceived her beloved. She did not speak, but her lips formed the name—
Cé Imral.

The monster lowered its horn. It charged. Without pity, without regard. It pierced its mother through the heart.

One by one, other monsters gathered, hundreds of them. All of them charged at the shining figure chained to the Gold Gong. They speared her heart, her sides, her hands, her face. Their horns scored her shining whiteness, and the brilliance of Hulan was torn with hideous wounds. Her blood spilled and ran in crimson streams, staining the sky with her pain.

All the worlds looked on. From the peak of Rudiobus where a golden-haired fey queen gazed up to the sky in tears . . . from the Haven deep in the Wood Between where a lady knight rushed outside and cried out in horror . . . from deepest valleys of the Mherking’s ocean kingdom; even there the blood seeped down and stained the faces of the mherfolk . . .

So all the worlds beheld the horror of the Moon’s undoing, of the Song’s un-singing, of the stars falling and rising up again. And all the worlds believed as one that the Final End had come.

Still, Hulan said nothing.

In the tumult and terror of that night, no man defending the palace walls from barbarian hordes and fiery dragons had time or attention to notice one shadow slipping over the temple walls and flitting across the palace gardens. So the raven, escaped from the temple dungeons, made its way freely through Manusbau, its flicking tongue searching the foul, smoke-thick air for a scent and a taste it craved.

Ah! There it was.

The raven turned in midair with unseen grace, changing its course and making not for the main palace where the emperor even now hid and a princess lay in burned ruin upon the dais steps—no, the raven sought instead a smaller set of buildings (smaller, but no less beautiful), from which it caught the scent of youth.

The scent of a child’s blood.

It flew into the Mahuthar, the children’s palace, where the emperor’s own small princes and princesses were even now clutched in the arms of their nursemaids and their queenly mothers. They had been awakened by their sisters, the Golden Daughters of the Masayi, and taken from their beds and nurseries down to the storage rooms below Mahuthar. No one would be able to get in or out without first passing the fierce young Golden Daughters, who wore no flowers in their hair that night but stood armed and dangerous around the perimeter, ready to defend their younger siblings and half-siblings unto death.

The raven did not care. It could smell the fear in these Golden Daughters, who were only just beyond childhood themselves. With each explosion along the palace walls, they would startle and turn, their attention, however momentarily, arrested.

And when, of a sudden, the moon overhead uttered her long Silence—when the sky above became red with moon’s blood, and all the worlds trembled in terror—the Golden Daughters crouched in equal terror, their guard dropped.

The raven took its chance. It did not care what happened to the worlds around it. It cared nothing for the Dragon’s plan or the Moon’s fate. It had long since ceased to hear either songs or silences. All it heard was the pulse of blood in the young breasts hidden below.

The children beneath the palace heard the silence but did not understand it. Little Prince Purang Khuir leaned up against his nursemaid, who couldn’t hold him for she had his younger sister wrapped in her arms. He heard her cry out in alarm though, and his heart beat all the faster in his breast. He clung to the only real comfort he could catch hold of, which was nothing more than a fluffy lion dog pushed into his arms by one of the Golden Daughters. “Hold him!” she’d told the little prince. “He’ll protect you.”

So Prince Purang Khuir held tight, burying his face in the lion dog’s head even as the silence of the heavens weighed down so dreadfully upon him.

The raven, having slipped past the Golden Daughters’ perimeter, crept soundlessly down the narrow passages, following the scent and taste of the children. Its eyes were very bright in the darkness, but no one saw it coming, for they had all hidden their faces in their terror. The raven moved like the shadowy hand of Death, drawing near to the first child, the little prince. Oh, how sweet was the smell of his blood! How luscious the beat of his heart! Like a viper ready to strike, the raven drew back its long beak.

Much to its surprise, it heard a long, low, “
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
”

“Got you!”

In the mortal realm, Sairu’s arm would have been yanked from its socket, and the pull of gravity might still have proven too much even for the grip of the beautiful, otherworldly man above her. But here, with the rising heat of the molten lake and the strange weightlessness that often accompanies a body in Dreams, Sairu found herself swinging like a pendulum, her wrist caught in a strong hand, her fall, momentarily at least, delayed.

As feather-light as the rest of her felt, she found it almost unbearably difficult to raise her head, to look up from the plunge beneath her to the face above her. But when she managed it at last, she found herself caught in the golden-eyed gaze of a man who, here in the Dream at least, was as familiar to her as the cat.

“Monster!” she cried. “Help me!”

“Yes, well, that’s the idea, isn’t it?” the beautiful man growled. “Take hold of my arm.”

She twisted her wrist as best she could, but could only catch part of his sleeve. He held her tight with one hand, struggling to maintain purchase on the chasm wall with the other.

“Can you catch hold of the rock?” the beautiful man shouted. “Can you—”

But his voice was broken off then by the roaring across the sky.

Sairu, suspended above the churning lake, turned again and looked out across the strange dreamscape above, before, and below her. She did not see what Jovann saw. She could not, for she had not his faith, and so her mind could find no comparable images. She saw only an enormous, twisting mass of shapes, sounds, colors, and, more than anything, lights, spiraling out of that space of existence where the great Moon Gate had stood. It was the delicate play of dust motes dancing in the sunlight spilling through a window. It was a hurricane tearing apart the lives and hopes of an entire coastal city. It was a mother standing helpless on the banks of a river, watching her child drown.

It was all these things and more, but there was nothing, no reference or comparison onto which Sairu could grasp for true understanding. She swayed in the rising heat, her fingers feebly grasping the edge of the beautiful man’s sleeve, and she experienced too much all in too short a space of time.

Her mind went blank.

And then through the blankness, a fixed point. Upon this she concentrated everything in her spirit. The Gold Gong.

“Monster!” she cried, twisting her head to gaze up at him again. She saw that he too was staring out at the spill of one reality into another. She saw that he perceived far more than she could, and that what he saw rendered him sick. “Monster!” she cried, but her voice could not reach him. His eyes stared out, beholding the flight of stars, the destruction of worlds. Tears welled up and spilled down his face, and she saw his lips moving in feeble prayer. “Song Giver, give us grace! Song Giver, give us mercy!”

The Masayi were taught from the time they entered the doors of the Golden Mother’s house to depend on nothing and no one beyond themselves. Sairu, staring up at that stricken face above her, felt a sudden swelling sense of betrayal and, following that, determination. The heat rose up against her, and she told herself, “This is a dream. You’ve dreamt before. You know what is possible in dreams.”

She let go her hold on the cat-man’s sleeve. With a violent twist, she pulled herself free.

At first she fell. Had she been entirely sane, she would have thought she’d made a mistake, would have believed she’d miscalculated her chances. But she was not sane just then, and in her madness she did not doubt. As she fell, she spread wide her arms and her legs, and felt the heat catch in her voluminous robes.

In dreams it is possible to fly.

She had little control. She never did when she dreamed of flight. And slowly she sank from that awful height, closer and closer to the burning lake below. Soon she was close enough to see the crevices in the black rocks, to feel the spray as scalding bubbles burst. She felt that there was more here as well. Though she could not see it, she felt the presence of a vast Dark Water beneath her, and it too churned and boiled like the molten lake of fire. It was all one, now that the Heavens had spilled into the Dream and the Dream into the Heavens.

Sairu would not think of that. She focused ahead to where the Gold Gong stood. She focused on the two figures lying collapsed atop a great hammer. Though she dipped close to the fire, she struggled and, through sheer force of will, would not allow herself to sink. Thus her feet touched the shore just before the gong, and she fell to her knees, gasping.

Evil surrounded her. She sensed it on all sides, above, below, even inside herself. The glaring light of the red lake was gone, along with the lake itself. Here the darkness was intense and living; the only light by which she could see came from the gong itself, and that light was more evil than the darkness. She pulled herself up and approached the gong. Blood dripped down its surface as though the gong itself bled. No other source presented itself to her vision, and she did not seek more closely for answers.

Jovann lay upon the ground, one hand still holding limply to the hammer. He gazed up at the gong, and Sairu saw he was near fainting with terror. And Lady Hariawan, beside him, stared at the gong as well, a deathly smile upon her lips as she watched the spill of blood.

Sairu flung herself at them, heedless of the evil. The force of love was upon her, and she could not stop, not now. Though she could scarcely see for terror, she felt the Path opening at her feet even as it had across the Dream wasteland. There was still hope.

“My mistress!” she cried, falling before Lady Hariawan and taking her by the shoulders. Lady Hariawan did not respond to her touch or her voice but remained as she was, gazing into a world, into a nightmare Sairu could not perceive. Sairu tried to lift her but found that her mistress’s body had gone leaden and would not be moved.

Only then did Sairu turn to Jovann. He seemed to be unaware of her. His grip on the hammer’s handle tightened and relaxed and tightened again. His cheeks were so sallow, so sickly green, she feared for a moment that he was dead even as he held himself upright. She took his face between her hands, gripping him hard, as though she wished to crush his skull. “Jovann! Jovann, wake up!” she urged. “Jovann, I am here! We must go. We must go, my love!”

His eyes, unseeing, rolled in their sockets. His lips moved, but she could not hear what he said until she put her ear close to his mouth. Then she heard him moaning, “Hulan! Hulan! Oh, why are we forsaken?”

“You are not forsaken,” Sairu growled. “I am with you!” With that, she wrenched the hammer from his grasp and heaved it away. Jovann moaned and fell against her. She could smell the stench of dragon poison in his breath, in his hair, in his skin. He shuddered, and she knew that he must be in great pain. “Jovann, can you hear me?” she begged, helping him to sit up and lean back against the dragon-shaped pillar. Then she took his head between her hands once more and whispered, forcing her voice to disguise the panic and reveal only calm: “Your pain is here. Beneath my hands. Feel it here beneath my hands.”

His face went greener than ever, as though the poison did indeed gather where she touched him. She felt her stomach heave but forced her hands to slide down his neck, down his shoulders. “Your pain is here, Jovann,” she whispered. “Feel it here. Feel your pain.”

As she moved her hands, the poison drained away from his face, leaving him pale but once more human. But his agonized arms shivered, and she continued with deliberate urgency. She slid her hands to his wrists, and then her palms were pressed against his, pressed ever so hard.

“Your pain is here. Hold your pain. Hold your pain in your hands.”

Jovann groaned, and his eyes rolled again, staring up at the gong and the dripping blood. He saw things she could not see, experienced agonies she could not share.

“Hold your pain,” Sairu said, desperation welling up in her heart. “Hold your pain. Hold it here. Oh Jovann, try! Please try! Hold your pain.”

“No. Let me hold it.”

Sairu, startled at the voice that spoke beside her, dropped her hold on Jovann’s hands and turned. She could not see, or not entirely see, the one who knelt beside her. But she felt his presence, more solid and more real than anything she had ever before experienced. She recognized the voice as the one that had been calling to her, guiding her along the Path in the Dream. Perhaps guiding her for longer than she realized.