The Way of Things: Upper Kingdom Boxed Set: Books 1, 2 and 3 in the Tails of the Upper Kingdom (107 page)

And so he shook his head again
and ran, concentrating on the sound of the claws against the skull and hoping
the songs of soldiers would drown out the songs of women.

***

It was almost night when they
moved the basket to the edge of the Wall. It was not a traditional basket as
one might imagine a basket, but rather a cage made of wood and ropes and wire
cables. It was used to transport firewood, stones and armour from deep in the
earth to the foundry. It had taken ten tigers just to get it and it’s massive
wheeled pulley there. The wind had picked up, bringing with it daggers of snow
and it took those same ten tigers—accompanied by a half-division of
soldiers and Captain Yuri Oldsmith-Pak, the ‘lion in charge’—to set it up
at the edge of the Wall.

As Ursa paced and Nevye watched,
Sireth benAramis walked along the parapet of the Great Wall, eyes closed, hands
extended at his side as if expecting to fly like his falcon. His brown robes
and long hair whipped like banners, threatening to lift him from his feet and
send him up into the air and over the Wall with the force. They had passed
three battle towers as they walked along this section and they had lost most of
the sun. Snow clouds were rolling in once again and it looked to be a very bad
night.

Finally the last Seer of
Sha’Hadin
slowed, began to circle like a top, hands spread wide. Suddenly, his eyes
snapped open and he moved to the cornice, peered over the edge to the very dark
and distant crags below.

“Here?” shouted Nevye and he
joined him, gripping the stone carapace as he too peered over the edge. The
wind was howling and words were snatched like falling leaves. “The music is
louder, I agree!”

“Yes!”

“What is that? That language? Is
that Dog?”

“The Language of the People, yes!”

“Can you understand it?”

“Not at all!”

“Won’t that be problematic?”

“Probably, yes!”

Nevye swallowed and looked again
over the side.

“Down there, then? I don’t see
anything! It’s too black! It’s all ice and rock and blackness!”

“Believe me,” the Seer turned
and smiled at him. “There will be a light soon enough!”

Nevye studied the sheer drop. It
was a very long way down.

Sireth turned to the Captain and
the tigers. “Can we lower the basket over the side, if you please.”

The tigers looked at the lion, then
back at him. Oldsmith-Pak, frowned.

“I’m afraid you are mistaken,
sahidi,”
he said quite formally. “That side is the Lower Kingdom. Perhaps you mean over
here?”

And he gestured with his golden
hand.

“No, Captain. This side, if you
please.”

The lion, tigers and the
soldiers all stared at him. Sireth smiled again.

“If you please.”

It was not a request.

Against the far side of the
parapet, Ursa Laenskaya was scowling. She looked very small in the shadow of
the mountain. As the tigers got to work setting up the pulley which would lower
the basket over the wrong side of the Wall, he moved over to her.

He did not touch her.

“You have forgotten,” she
hissed.

“I have not forgotten.”

“They only killed you, they did
not hurt you.” Her pale eyes met his. “They hurt the Captain very much. They
hurt me. Is that so easy to forget?”

“My love, you are my life,” he
said quietly and now he did touch her, reaching out to stroke her cheek. “I
would never, could never forget what they did to you.”

“I cannot forgive them.”

“They
…are dead.”

She set her jaw. “Their people.”

“Their people are not
responsible.”

“You defend them.”

“I do not. But tell me…” He
stepped close. “How was it any different than what
our
people did when
you were small?”

Her eyes flashed at him,
furious.

“And yet,” he said, undeterred.
“You would serve the Empire of the people who did what they did to you. Tell
me, my love, how is this any different?”

She looked away, her profile
sharp in the setting purple of the sky. Her hair rose and fell with the breeze
and he reached to smooth it from her face. She did not fight.

“You forge the steel, my love,”
he said. “Find it in yourself. For yourself.”

Her silver cheek rippled as tiny
muscles twitched but swiftly, she turned to him.

“I will not kill them.”

He kissed her forehead.

“Thank you. There will be blood
soon enough.”

He slid his eyes to the jaguar,
standing with cloak wrapped tightly around his body near the cornice of the
Wall. The wind was strong and his hair was finally breaking free of the knot at
his neck. Things would change for them all soon.

There was shouting from the
tigers as the basket went over the Wrong Side of the Wall.

***

The devastation of Karan’Uurt
was as swift as it was complete as houses, gars and farms were burned to
cinders. All villagers were slaughtered in their beds and those who dared flee
were set alight and released in fields of snow and dried wheat. The skies above
Karan’Urt were black that day and almost without exception, it would be
forgotten, erased from the history of the People at the word of the Khargan,
Khan Baitsukhan the Bear. Burned from history, gone from memory. The wheat and
the bread, the soups and the stews. The songs of childhood, the legends of old
men and the wisdom of women, no more than ashes on the wind.

Jalair Naranbataar and Jalair
Naransetseg, Grandchildren of the Blue Wolf, would remember Karan’Uurt but they
would not weep. There was a basket coming over the Wall and the time for
weeping was done.

***

It took more than ten tigers to
pull the basket up from the Wrong Side of the Wall. The wind was so strong that
the cage was swinging at the end of the pulley and it was a miracle that it had
reached the top without shattering entirely. They shouted and strained but
maneuvered it closer to the side, managing to snag the slats and draw it to
safety on the stone parapet of the Wall.

The distant cauldrons sent
orange and white lights dancing across the stone, distorting snow and faces in
colour but suddenly, an unnatural light flared to life within the cage, revealing
three passengers, shrouded in black.

Sireth benAramis stepped forward
to spring the latch for the cage.

“Sidi,”
purred a familiar
voice and like a shadow, the Alchemist came from the basket, her palm glowing
like a beacon. Her eyes were golden orbs behind the wrappings of black silk and
magic.

 
“Sidala,”
he answered and he could sense the shift in
the soldiers behind him. This was sorcery, they knew it, and while they were
proud of the way the Gifts and the Arts served the Kingdom, they were superstitious
to the bone. Cats are, after all, a superstitious people.

The golden eyes slid past him to
the small figure dressed in winter bear. Both swords were out and at the ready.

“Major,” the Alchemist smiled.

“I have promised not to kill
you,” growled Ursa.

“That is something, then.”

Sireth noticed Yahn Nevye,
several paces away, arms still crossed over his chest. The man was a puzzle.

He turned back to the cheetah.

“And your friends?”

“Mmm. Yes. My friends.”

She stepped aside but the two
stayed in the protection of the basket. The taller had an arm around the
smaller, and with the many layers of fabric and night-black silk, their
features were almost indistinguishable.

“Perhaps,” said the Alchemist.
“We might make introductions in the warmth of a battle tower? My friends have
been wounded and they need rest.”

He met her eyes. It was because
of her that both could see.

“Of course,” he said archly.

He turned to the Captain, but
there was movement as the smaller of the two figures slipped out of the cage.

The soldiers shifted but she
moved through them like a dancer, pausing only to stand before Yahn Nevye. He
stepped back. She stepped forward.

“You,” she whispered, her voice
barely audible over the wailing of the wind. She turned her head back toward
the other, her profile unmistakable under the moonlight and the stars. “Rani,
look…”

“Setse,
ugayi!”
in a
language understood by few on the Wall and the second figure stepped forward,
not bothering to cover his face. The Alchemist laid a hand on his chest,
holding him back with a strength she should not have.

A current went through the
soldiers and they snapped to attention, swords and bos drawn. The Captain
stepped forward now but was blocked by a katanah, razor tip poking a small hole
in his uniform.

“Do not,” growled Ursa,
kodai’chi held mantis-like over her head.

Another shift and both sword and
spear formed a ring of steel around the Major when suddenly, a wall of flame
leapt into life, surrounding all of them in heat and brilliant light. Even the
roaring, whipping wind could do little to dissuade it and tongues of fire
licked pelt and uniform alike.

“Enough,” bellowed the last Seer
of
Sha’Hadin.
“Sheathe your weapons! All of you!”

They did not but at least they did
not lunge. He turned to watch the figures outside of the flames, the dancer
still poised before the jaguar.

“I know you,” she said, her
voice young and halting as she wrapped her thoughts around a new tongue. “I
have seen…”

Nevye stepped back again.

She cocked her head as if
hearing a faraway sound.

“Shar Ma’uul. You Shar Ma’uul. I
have known for my life…”

He stepped back again.

“Ulaan Baator coming,” she said,
moving closer. “Is all coming. Blood. Can see it? Can see dragons and eyes and
blood? Eye of the Needle, Eye of the Storm.
 
The fall of Ulaan Baator at steel of Ulaan Baator?”

And from the shadows of her
reindeer cloak, she reached a hand up to his face.

Suddenly, he whirled and marched
off down the parapet, the way they had come. He was silhouetted by the flames
of the cauldrons, disappearing in a heartbeat.

Slowly the dancer turned.

“He can’t see,” she moaned and
she pulled the silk from her face. There were tears streaking her strange
cheeks, her one blue eye glittering in the moonlight. “Shar Ma’uul can’t see.
Too terrible. It consume us all…”

And she began to shake.

The other pushed past the hand
of the Alchemist and bolted to the dancer’s side, catching her as she folded
like paper to the ground.

The flames died away as quickly
as they had come and the Captain marched up to the last Seer of
Sha’Hadin.

“What is this?” he demanded.
“Tell me or I will toss you all over the Wall, monasteries and palaces be
damned.”

Sireth sighed.

“Birth pangs,” he said softly.

“Birth pangs?” growled the
Captain. “Birth pangs of what?”

Sherah al Shiva pulled the black
silks from her face, the unnatural flame in her hand dying as well. Her words
were directed at the Commander but the great golden eyes were fixed on the Seer.

“Unification,” she said.

“Unification?”

“Unification.” Sireth nodded
slowly, and turned his attention to the pair huddled on the snowy parapet.
Surrounded by terrified, sword-wielding soldiers and cauldrons of oil burning
orange and white, he hoped they would all live to see the morning.

And for the first time in hours,
he realized that the singing had stopped.

Khanmaker

They had seen no Ancestors
since the destruction of the Plan B, so they made it a point to start walking.
There seemed no other reasonable alternative. It was spring in Ancestorland and
the seacoast was cool and windy. Kerris had managed to catch and dry several
lines of fish and but they needed fresh water so reluctantly, they left the
shore and headed inland, hoping for signs of human life, all the while dreading
what they might find.

The land was a deciduous
forest, filled with ash, beech and serviceberry and they found a creek almost
immediately upon leaving the shoreline. Like the road to
Ana’thalyia
,
there were Ancestral ruins as well - saplings grew through rusted carts and
foundations of stone were covered in moss and ferns. Also, like in
Ana’thalyia
,
birds were everywhere and once again, Kerris had proven to be an able hunter.
Food would not be an issue in this new world, which Fallon had taken to calling
Ancestorland. Solomon insisted they were in either Virginianna or Maryland of
the Eastern Sea Board, but somehow, Ancestorland stuck.

After four days, they came
upon a fence. It was tall and made of wire but it had buckled in places under
the weight of time. Thin trees had grown up through it as well, branches
pushing the wire into awkward shapes and there were great gaping holes where it
had completely deteriorated. But stranger still were the bodies of the animals
at its base. Some were skeletons, others dried as if they had perished in a
desert. There were even bones of birds that seemed to have died as they perched
on remaining fence posts. It was a strange macabre sight.

“They look dessicated,” said
Solomon.

“Dessicated?” asked Fallon.

“Dried. Freeze-dried,
actually.” He rubbed a hand along his neck. “That’s weird.”

“Can you hear that?”

“What?” said Solomon. “I
don’t hear anything.”

“Exactly,” said Fallon,
rocking back on her heels. “No birds.”

She was right. No birds, no
crickets. The only sound was the rustle of the breeze through the trees.

Solomon turned around, hands
on hips.

“Yeah,” he said. “With all
these dead critters, there should be flies too.”

“No flies,” said Fallon.

“No flies,” Solomon repeated.

“I don’t like this,” said
Kerris. “It smells white.”

“White?” The Ancestor blinked
at him. “It smells white?”

“And hot. And angry. The air is
angry.”

Tigress and human exchanged
glances.

“Another missile?” asked
Solomon.

“No, but I think we should
leave.”

Solomon studied the fence,
the dry forest beyond.

“Well, a fence is a
construct. That implies constructors.”

“Ancestors?” said Fallon.

“Yeah. It may be a couple of
hundred years old but there may be a city inside. Tech we could use.”

“We need to leave,” repeated
Kerris.

“And where are we going,
Kerris?” said Solomon and he shrugged. “I mean, without the boat, we’re kinda
stuck here and it’s quite a long walk to the Canadian Shield.”

Fallon sighed.

“Maybe we could find another
Humlander?”

“That’s what I’m hoping. Or a
Griffen.”

“Griffen?” said Fallon.

“Yeah, a GyroRotar--”

She was staring at him.

“Never mind. It’s simply
astounding the things that are rattling around inside my head.”

She grinned. “Oh look! A
bird.”

Sure enough, a tiny songbird
flitted in through the trees, landed on a thin arc of fence wire, bobbed up and
down with quick little motions.

“Please, we need to leave
now,” said Kerris and he began to back away. “The air is very angry.”

“Kerris?”

He clapped his hands over his
ears, backed away some more.

“Can’t you hear it?” he
moaned. “Why can’t you hear it?”

Suddenly there was a sound
unlike anything they had ever heard and a pulse of light from beyond the fence.
All three of them were forced to look away, hands over ears, eyes clenched
tight. It seemed like a lifetime wrapped in a blanket of intense light and when
it ended, it was a sudden as when it had come. Slowly, carefully, they
straightened, looked back at the fence.

The bird was dead on the
wire, dried like a leaf in autumn.

“Damn,” said Solomon.
“Maiden.”

“Maiden?” asked Fallon.

“Yeah, MAIDEN.
Microwave-Assisted Ion Desorption ENergy. Old tech. Kills living things but leaves
structures intact. It was banned when I went under.” He began to back away.
“Kerris is right. We better—”

He didn’t have time to finish
his sentence before they noticed white shapes moving beyond the fence.

“Bones,” said Kerris.

And the grey lion grabbed his
wife’s hand as the MAIDEN fence began to hum once again.

They ran.

Back the way they had come,
leaping over the rocks and roots of the young forest, but they didn’t get far
when the white light pulsed a second time. Without even a cry, Solomon hit the
ground hard, rolling and tumbling and finally coming to a stop in a heap on the
forest floor. Fallon swung back, releasing Kerris’ hand but the pulse struck
her next, causing her slim body to arc violently in midair. She too fell to the
ground.

“No!” Kerris cried and he
scrambled back to his wife, dropping to his knees and cradling her in his arms.
“No, no, no, no, no…”

The forest cracked with sound
as three figures thundered through the trees, tall and white and entirely
unnatural. They slowed when they reached the trio and Kerris looked up at them
with wide eyes. He could feel the angry white from within their chests and
inside plates of dark glass, he saw the faces of Ancestors.

“Bones,” he said, rising to
his feet. “An Army of Bones.”

He slid the katanah from the
obi, heard the light gather, felt the air breathe deep and recoil into the
bones. He knew what was coming but he snarled and swung, the steel slicing a
clean line into the white fiber of the thigh. The face behind the glass howled,
its voice like the scraping of tin cups when the chest burst with light, cold
and white, and then nothing more for some time.

***

Kirin looked down at his brother
from the back of his horse.

“Seriously, Kerris?” he said.
“This is sounding worse and worse.”

Kerris grinned up at him. “And
that’s not even the half of it. Head down.”

As one, the brothers leaned low
as their horses scrambled up the set of steps in the starlight, reaching a
plateau at the count of twenty.

It was dark now, the moon
illuminating the Wall and painting the mountains in strokes of silver. Snow was
floating from the skies and even with the roar of a hundred cauldrons burning
along the Wall and the stomp and snort of over two thousand horses, it seemed
as if the night were holding its breath. Tomorrow, they would make
Shen’foxhindi
and everything would change.

In the moonlight, Kerris reached
down to run his hand along the thick, tangled mane. Quiz snorted, tossed his
head

“Thank you,” he said, looking up
at his brother. “I never thought I’d see him again.”

Kirin grinned a sleepy grin. “It
was entirely his own idea. He is a very headstrong creature.”

“I love him so much. And Fallon
and the kittens. Honestly, Kirin, sometimes I think my chest will burst.”

Kirin looked over his shoulder
at the figure of his brother’s young wife, eyes closed, head bobbing as she
dozed on the back of her painted horse. After a year on the trail, all of them
could function perfectly from the saddle and it was serving her well. They had
been riding for four days now and had made good time considering the ice and
snow and wind on the Wall.

“Head down,” said Kirin and
together they leaned forward over the necks of their mounts as hooves scrambled
up the stone steps toward the next plateau. In the Great Mountains, the Wall
rose and fell with the peaks, skirting some, wrapping others and steps were
almost as common as battle towers. It made Kirin grateful for the cauldrons of
orange and white, for even with the bright cold moon as a guide, the steps were
dark under so many horses. A slip or a stumble could mean a break of a leg and
a horse that would not live to finish the journey. He marveled it had not
happened yet.

“Have you been counting the
cats?” panted Kerris as they reached the next plateau.

“Counting the cats?” he
answered. “What do you mean?”

“We pick up a few more at each
battle tower. About seventy or eighty have joined the front but it’s impossible
to count the ones that have joined at the rear. I honestly can’t see that far
back. I was wondering if anyone was keeping track?”

Kirin sat back in his saddle,
cast his eyes around at the mass of horses moving together, now merely
glinting, jingling scales of a huge lumbering dragon. It hadn’t occurred to him
that others would be joining. He hadn’t noticed their number increase, but it
made perfect sense. This was a mission of nationalistic pride, and cats were,
after all, a nationalistic people.

“No,” he said finally. “But I’m
certain we’ll find out once we reach the foundry.”

Kerris grunted. “I pulled the
sticks this morning.”

“And?”

“Five.”

“Five sticks?”

“No,” he grinned. “The number
five.”

“And that means?”

“Death,” the Geomancer lifted a
flask of sakeh to his lips. “Five is the number of death. Sakeh?”

He held the flask out to his
brother. Their horses were very close. Kirin could have taken it easily.

“No, but thank you Kerris. You
know how I am with drink. I don’t wish to fall asleep just yet.”

“I remember. You were mortified
with all the snakes.” Kerris pocketed the flask. “Do you think they’ll be at
Pol’Lhasa
yet?”

“They?”

“The kittens.”

Kirin studied his brother’s
profile, wondered if he too was grieving the loss of his children in the same
manner as his wife.
He’s a wonderful father,
Fallon had insisted. Kirin
wondered if it could possibly be true.

“Most likely,” he answered. “I
sent a parchment with their nursemaid for Ling’s eyes only. She will see they
are cared for, I promise you.”

“Ling?” Kerris turned to grin at
his brother. “You call her Ling?”

“Aaah…”

“Kirin? Do you?”

He steeled his jaw, not certain
how to proceed.

“Well??”

“I do.”

“I thought she was married?”

“He died. Mal’haria.”

“So sad. Really. Really terribly
sad. So, ah…” Kerris’ grin widened. “Was she…
happy
to see you?”

He felt the heat in his cheeks
but he smiled all the same.

“Quite.”

Kerris threw back his head and
laughed so that horses startled and soldiers snapped to attention and the
entire Wall and surrounding mountains echoed with the sound of his laughter.
Fallon opened sleepy eyes and smiled unawares.

“Oh my dear brother,” Kerris
panted, finally wiping tears from his eyes. “Well done, I say. Well done
indeed.”

“Kerris, hush!”

“They’ll be writing odes in no
time!”

“Kerris, please—”

“From Imperial gold to Shogun
red, he finds himself in a royal bed.”

“Kerris!”

“I’ll say no more, brother. But
I am glad for you. Really. Truly.” And Kerris turned away from him, the smile
becoming a knife on his face. “She’s a better match than your Alchemist.”

There was an edge to his voice
and Kirin understood. Sherah al Shiva had almost destroyed the group with her
devices and schemes. Of them all, Kerris had been the most affected.

“We’ll never be allowed to
marry,” Kirin said, eager to avoid the subject of Alchemy.
 
“And I don’t know how long I’ll even be
allowed to live. Head down.”

And they scrambled up yet
another twenty steps.

“They won’t touch you,” said
Kerris, once they reached the plateau. They were very high up now and the
silver mountains in moonlight were breathtaking. “Not after such a public
reinstatement of the Shogun-General.”

“I’m certain I was being
followed in the Palace.”

“You probably were. And now? On
the road to the Gate of Five Hands?”

He shook his head. “I can’t say.
I don’t know.”

“Hm. Did you see Mummie?”

And now it seemed Kerris was
holding his breath. Their mother was old and he loved her very much.

“Yes,” he said. “She was happy
you were with tigers.”

“Hmm.”

“Fallon says you called the
katanah out of the sea.”

“I suppose I did.”

“She says you can call many
things.”

“Well, our Seer was right on
that account.” He released a deep breath, frosting like a snowdrift in front of
his face. “The earth is sick, Kirin.”

“Sick?”

“Yes. And I think it’s angry.”

“About what?”

“The foundry, I expect. It’s a
very large mine, yes?”

“I believe so.”

“Hmm. Understandable, really. No
cat would be particularly happy with creatures digging around inside, taking
bits out of you and not saying sorry. Cats are rude that way. No, I can
understand completely why the earth is sick and angry.”

Kirin studied his brother for a
long moment before a set of down steps demanded his attention. But he thought
on his words for a long while after that, even as the night began to break into
the colours of morning.