The Way of Things: Upper Kingdom Boxed Set: Books 1, 2 and 3 in the Tails of the Upper Kingdom (131 page)

She wanted the eyes of the
Khargan. She would kill everyone in her path until she got them.

***

The claws would have sliced
him open had he not been quicker but it stomped with one heavy foot and caught
the tip of his tail, likely breaking a bone or two under the weight. He swung
round with the rock again, connecting on the side of the bear’s jaw, sending a
tooth flying out but he managed to scramble away before the creature could
recover. The yellow was buzzing up the walls of the sky and the red light over
the sun was shrieking like a dying rat and the collars that were around their
necks were to make them fight or endure the pain. It was a spectacle, a Show of
One Hundred Tricks, and they were the acrobats.

Metal

“NO!” he shouted to the
arena. “Are you not our Ancestors? Is this—”

He gagged as the yellow
buzzed through his jaw, threatening to push his eyes out of their sockets and
the bear struck him again, sending him reeling onto the rocks. Its weight fell
on him, forcing the air from his lungs and sending pain anew rushing up from
his ribs. He could smell its foul breath, feel the heat as its large teeth sank
into the flesh between his shoulder and neck. The rocks were calling him now as
he pulled up his feet, clawed at the thighs but the strength was draining from
his limbs. He raked the hairless face, spraying blood onto his cheeks but the
bear tugged away, strips of grey pelt and pink flesh in its teeth.

Metal
and
Earth

The bear bellowed, pushed
down with its arms and Kerris felt his ribs splinter under the weight. A
strange lightness filled Kerris then but the metal was speaking and the rocks
were speaking and there was nothing stopping him from understanding their
language so he reached up and grabbed the bear’s metal collar with both hands
and closed his eyes and called.

The yellow filled the entire
world and the bear howled in silence, arching its hairless back, mouth wide,
tongue stiff and Kerris could see blood vessels burst in the brown eyes. The
yellow flowed through him and he channeled it through the muscles deep into the
organs until blood burst from the nostrils and the ears and claws began to
smoke. He rolled over on top of it now, forcing the yellow deep into every
fibre and the creature convulsed and spasmed and its eyes burst out from their
sockets and the hair on its neck sizzled and burned. Finally, there was
nothing, the body as hard and dry as the rocks beneath it.

He released it then, rising
to his feet and scanning the compound with eyes of lightning.

He looked down. Sparks were
circling around his fists, something that only happened when his lover called,
so he raised them, sending the yellow up to the shrieking red light. It
exploded like fireworks, with sparks and bits of glass raining down onto the
rock of the compound floor.

There was a buzz at his
throat but he welcomed it, wrapped his fingers around it, calling it, embracing
and doubling the energy of it and it fell away, blackened by the heat. He
closed his eyes and flung his arms wide, following the metal back to the very
walls themselves, sending the yellow back through its path and causing the
walls of sky and trees to shatter into a thousand thousand shards of glass and
metal and fire and the faces of the Ancestors now, pressed up against a
compound without walls to keep them safe.

The Show of One Hundred
Tricks over, a mob of five thousand turned and fled.

Then there were Bones, a trio
of white Bones, marching in from one side, weapons held in their hands but he
sent the yellow into them, the weapons flying from their hands, Bones flying
from their feet. The rocks were laughing so he called them too, willed them to
rise beneath the Bones and he felt more than watched rocks as large as men
heaved up from the ground. The Ancestors were fleeing from the compound,
screaming as stones burst from the earth to fly like the birds, to rise up and
sail high before crashing down on the shattered remains of the wall of sky and
trees. Alarms were still wailing in the distance but finally he was alone in a
compound with no walls and sparks circling around his fists.

He stood for a long time,
feeling the wind on his face, breathing deep the fresh air of twilight. It was
twilight. He hadn’t known. He couldn’t tell.

He could see buildings, low
square buildings with the crowds of Ancestors still fleeing toward them. He
could see towers and fences and grass and trees and sky and clouds and rocks
everywhere. He looked down to see the bear at his feet, dead as if by lightning
and he felt sad, wondered how long it had been here as a prisoner and how many
people he had killed, but then, he heard voices and he saw Ancestors and Solomon
and his wife, his beautiful wife and he wanted to leave, wanted to go home,
wanted to crawl back into his bed of skins and blankets and furs and sleep for
a hundred,
a
thousand years.

The sparks dissipated into
the night sky and his wife caught him as he sank to his knees.

***

The Snow is a remarkable thing
to watch. On the battlefield, they move so swiftly they can barely be seen.
Hands, feet, tails, swords, they move like cobras, they move like water and the
sheer art of them is poetry to behold. But dogs are bigger, dogs are stronger
and soon, even the Snow was falling under the iron of the
Chanyu.

Bo Fujihara’s face was streaked
with blood as he rode his horse through the chaos to Kerris’ side behind one of
the fallen Deer Stones. He was wearing the kabuto of his people, tall and
colourful with a red tassel from the crown, but in his hands was a long
cylindrical shape wrapped in black fabric and gold cording. He sprang from his
horse and passed it into Kerris’ waiting hands.

“Solomon would kill me,” the
grey lion growled. “My wife will most certainly.”

“If any of us live because of
this, then a death at their hands would be a welcome thing.” The ambassador
sagged against the stone, looked down at the arrow sticking out of the grey
lion’s thigh. “You have been hit.”

“So was Quiz. I can’t find him
anywhere.”

“Quiz is a clever pony. He will
find high ground and snow.”

Kerris grunted, threw the fabric
to the earth to reveal the weapon of the Ancestors, the strange instrument of
tarnished metal and interlocking parts. The Breath of the Maiden. It looked so
simple, could kill them all with a single pass. He shook his head.

“I can’t.”

“You must.”

“This was a mistake, Bo. I
should have just,” he breathed out. “I should have just done this on my own. I
mean, my wife is out there! Alone, Bo! Alone with the horses! What were we
thinking?”

Bo laid a hand on his shoulder.
“There is a proverb of my people: Both the victor and the vanquished are but
drops of dew or bolts of lightning. Thus should we view the world.”

Kerris sighed.

“Kaidan,” said Fujihara. “Look
at them. They love this, every one of them. They are soldiers. Nothing will
stop the fighting until they believe that the Ancestors are worse.”

Kerris let his eyes sweep over
the field of battle, the cats dancing with their swords, the dogs hacking with
their halah’bards, the Snow moving like water through them all. The sky was
dark but the red was winning.

“They must believe that the
Ancestors are worse,” repeated Bo.

“The Ancestors
are
worse.”

“I know this too. So take it.
But I am a diplomat. If I must fight, I will fight like one.”

And the ambassador put his pipe
between his teeth and smiled at him and Kerris loved how smiles found their
homes on
Chi’Chen
faces when an arrow struck him in the forehead and he
went down.

Kerris staggered backwards,
watched with horror as the body crumpled to the ground and lay twitching, smile
still attached to the pink face. The pipe was on the rocks next to him, wisps
of smoke curling from the bowl. He turned to watch the chaos, cat against dog,
dog against monkey, horses running mad in the field of stones. The sky was
black but the ground was blood red.

He scanned the battlefield for
Fallon, knew it would be impossible with the sheer numbers of bodies on the
plain, but he did see a painted horse, stumbling with empty saddle and swinging
reins. It looked like hers and his heart lurched as he saw the arrows sticking
out from its neck, flank, chest and spine. The saddle itself was littered with
barbs.

The Ancestors were worse,
he
told himself as he fought the stinging of his eyes.
The Ancestors were
worse.

“Bolts of lightning,” he
muttered. “Welcome to the Show of One Hundred Tricks.”

He hiked the weapon onto his
shoulder and moved his finger across the plate.

***

Sherah screamed but did not
release her grip on the Oracle of Jia’Khan. In fact, Sireth was certain she
hung on faster, tightening her grip on the silk cords at his throat. As the
Oracle began to weaken, the Seer steeled his will and reached up to the single
eye of the Eye of the Storm. He could see it focus, the dark pupil grow sharp
as it realized what he was about to do. The creature strained against their
hold but the Alchemist held fast and the Seer was the husband of a warrior and
so he extended his claws, shiny and black in the yellow moonlight and plunged
them into the eye of the Eye of the Storm.

The creature thrashed its head,
effectively pulling the orb out from its socket and leaving a string of tendon
and vein. The Seer held the eye out, turned it toward its home.

“Do you see yourself, Storm? I
don’t know who or what you were in the beginning but this is what you have
become. It is obscene and will be destroyed by flesh and by will. It only
remains to be seen how you go, and if you manage to restore any honour you may
have had in your youth.”

The thrashings stilled and the
breaths shuddered. The massive tongue protruded from its mouth.

“I know you hear me,” said the
Seer. “Release the Magic and use the last of your powers to heal this woman and
I will place your eye next to the eye of the Eye of the Needle when we burn
you. You will stare at each other until the next life, if you are granted one.”

The Alchemist twisted the cord
and finally, after what seemed like a lifetime, the ground thundered as the
Oracle sank to its knees. Sireth pulled the dagger from his robes, the one
given to him from his warrior wife and slit the cords that led from the eye. He
dropped the eye and the creature sagged onto the stone, his breaths coming in
long shuddering sighs.

Slowly, Sherah removed herself
from the Oracle’s back. The arm of bone was still embedded above her collarbone
and Sireth moved around to help her. He grasped it with both hands, hissed as
the dark chi burned his pelt, but he pulled it out swiftly, tossed it to the
ground where it turned to ash and blew away on the breeze.

She fell forward and he caught
her in his arms.

He smiled down at her, stroked
her night-black hair.

“An eye for an eye, a life for a
life.”

She smiled at him.

“Of course.”

And closed her kohl-rimmed lids
under his tender hand.

***

There was a hum, then a thick
beam of light that flashed across the night sky and every
soldier—Imperial, Dog and Snow—stopped, utterly breaching their
instincts and their training. Circles glowed for a long moment in several of
the Deer Stones, before crumbling entirely, leaving large holes open to the
night sky, crackling edges of charcoal and smoke.

Every man on the Plateau of Tevd
stopped to stare as Kerris leapt onto a fallen Stone, sweeping his eyes across
the plain. Far in the distance, a group of cats, dogs and monkeys were still
fighting under one of the few Deer Stones left standing. He looked down at the
body of Bo Fujihara, smile frozen beneath the arrow. He snarled and looked up,
hiked the weapon and moved his finger across the plate once again.

The beam sought out the Stone
and it glowed for several moments, its shape a sharp contrast against the
darkness of the night. The fighters bolted, dropping their weapons as the Stone
crumbled into dust, leaving only the sharp smell of blue in the air.

There was a blackness pressing
down on him, the stench of death, the weight of shadows. He fought it off.

“Next?” he shouted. “Who would
like to taste the Breath of the Maiden? Come on, people? Cats? Dogs? Monkeys? Who?”

There was silence on the holy
Plateau of Tevd.

“I know. The Khargan! Where’s
the bloody Khargan?” He swung the weapon around in a large circle. “He can
breathe the Breath of the Maiden, then tell us that we still need to fight.”

His tail lashed and he swung the
weapon around, fighting the heaviness to stay on his feet.

“Come on? Where is the Khan, the
bravest of the brave? Is it too dark?” Sparks began to appear like fireflies
out of the dark sky around his fist. “How about a little lightning, then? Drops
of dew, bolts of lightning? Makes things so much easier when you can see who
you’re killing…”

“Be gaz’uul, saaral ma’uul,”
snarled a voice and a large dog stepped out of the darkness and up to the
Stone. Kerris could see the golden manes of lions woven through his iron hair,
the rings and rings of claws around his neck.

“Finally,” said Kerris. “My name
is Kerris Wynegarde-Grey, Kaidan of
Pol’Lhasa.
It is an honour to meet
you, oh great Khan.”

But he did not lower the weapon,
nor did he bow.

The Kharagan grunted, gestured
with
ala Asalan
.