“Juong-Khla of the Khla clan sends you a message.”
Sunan wondered if he would ever find his voice again. The tremors had reached his knees now, and he leaned against the wall beside the door to keep himself upright. His mind whirled with a number of impossibilities. He knew that there was perhaps just enough time for the gurta he had seen in the spring to have made the long trek back to Chhayan territory in the west. But to send a message in response? That wasn’t possible. It simply was not possible.
“Take the message, Juong-Khla Sunan,” said the voice on the other side of the door.
“Speak it,” Sunan gasped.
“I cannot. It is written.”
Chhayans did not read or write. But Sunan’s mother could. She rarely used the skill, sometimes pretending no longer to possess it. But perhaps, within a letter from Juong-Khla, she might have inscribed her own message?
Sunan hated himself. He hated the sudden surge of heart-sickness, the sudden feeling that he was once more a child, not a tall Tribute Scholar grown to manhood. He hated the sudden need for something, some word from his mother, some comfort, if comfort ever could be had again.
But perhaps the man on the other side of the door meant to kill him. Perhaps that was the message his father sent.
It didn’t matter. Drawing a deep breath, Sunan put his hand to the bolt, lifted it, and let the door swing wide. The light of day blinded him, and the stink of Chhayan buffalo washed unrelentingly over him.
“Juong-Khla Sunan?” spoke the Chhayan voice.
Sunan nodded. The next moment a scroll was placed in his hand. And no knife planted in his heart. So that was good. Probably.
“Do . . . do you need a response?” Sunan asked as his fingers closed tight around the parchment.
“No,” replied the Chhayan. He remained where he stood, his arms folded, silent.
“Um. Do you want to come in?”
“No.”
Sunan licked his dry lips. “Is there, um, anything else I can do for you?”
“No.”
Squinting into the sunlight, Sunan still could make out no features on the shadowed face, nothing beyond a thick, square jaw. “Well then, I, uh . . . thank you?”
At that, the Chhayan bowed. He stepped back from the door, turned around and . . .
And he didn’t disappear. Of course he didn’t. People don’t just disappear into thin air, not normal people anyway. Maybe the Crouching Shadows could (who knew with folks like that?) but certainly not a big, beef-fed, blunt-bladed Chhayan nomad. No, Sunan must have blacked out momentarily, miraculously staying on his feet in the process, and while he was out, the messenger had walked all the way back across the courtyard and through the closed gate—which was bolted from the inside, Sunan noticed—and disappeared into the city beyond. That’s how it must have been.
Once more Sunan felt the skin-crawling sensation that someone was watching him. He shut the door, but the sensation didn’t go away. So he scuttled back to his chamber at the back of the house like a mouse darting for its hole, and the thought came to him as from a great distance that he was a pathetic creature. Son of a warlord? Hardly!
But he lacked the energy to face such thoughts head-on. He dropped to his low cushion, panting, and stared at the scroll. As though it would catch fire in his hand. As though it would poison him by its very existence.
He must open it eventually, however, and eventually could not be avoided forever. At last he broke the seal and rolled out the page. His breath caught as he saw, after so many years, his mother’s hand.
But it was not his mother who addressed him now across the leagues. Within a neatly inscribed character or two, his mother’s neatness and beauty were lost in the words she wrote, dominated as she always was by the force of Juong-Khla.
Sunan heard his father’s voice in his head as he read:
Son of my Stolen Wife:
In this treachery at last you prove yourself my son. Only a man of the Tiger would find the passion within to see his hatred through to such an end. I only hope that you found enough of the Tiger’s rage in your veins to plunge the knife yourself. Somehow I cannot make myself believe as much.
The secret you have sent is a mighty gift. Should it prove true, you may consider yourself a free man. The life of my heir for the Long Fire—a worthy price and one a Tiger will always pay. But know this, son of my stolen wife: If we meet again, your life is mine.
And so his mother’s hand ended, her elegant calligraphy giving way to the ragged scrawl that served as Juong-Khla’s signature, like the slicing claws of a tiger. Nothing more. No personal message from his mother herself. Nothing. Final.
Sunan read it again. “How did it come here so swiftly?” he whispered. He pretended this question consumed all other thought, pretended to turn it over in his mind with all his academic intensity. He pretended his heart didn’t burn with two-fold shame: Shame at his brother’s death, which was his fault; shame that he had, even at the last, let his father down and failed to deliver the killing stroke.
“There’s no possible way on this mortal earth a man could have traveled so far, so fast. How then? How could—”
He broke off his pretense, and his eyes bulged in their sockets. At first he did not believe what he saw. But that was his own fault. Foolish Sunan! He knew better. He should have looked for it at once!
The letter was written in his mother’s hand. His clever, clever mother, outwardly so obedient to her lord and husband, inwardly so full of hate more potent than any tiger’s.
A line here. A dash there. A careful arrangement of form. Words that he knew could never have been spoken by his uncouth father, no matter how sincere the sentiment they contained.
As Sunan stared at the letter, he saw the code taking shape as though by magic. A secret message from his mother, and it said:
Beware the Greater Dark.
Beware the Dragon.
A small stone shrine stood on the brink where the road dropped off on one side to a river winding far below. It was an old shrine styled after a fashion seen across the Noorhitam Empire: a small, round Moon Gate, about the right height for a rabbit to slip through, leading from nowhere to nowhere. These gate-shrines, Princess Safiya had explained to Sairu long ago, symbolized passages from this world into the Heavens and they were built, supposedly, in replication of the great Gate into Hulan’s Garden.
“It is an old tradition and, as such, should be treated with respect,” Princess Safiya said. But Sairu felt little respect for traditions based on lies.
Nevertheless, she felt uncomfortable seeing the cat seated under the arch of the Moon Gate shrine, brazen as an emperor’s peacock, grooming one white paw.
Sairu spotted him first. Brother Nicho led the way, and he made signs of reverence before the shrine but did not seem to see the cat—who smiled as though the reverence were made to him and not to the gate. He turned that smile on Sairu as she approached, and she matched him smile for smile.
“Making good progress?” the cat asked. The mule turned its long nose to look down upon him, but found him singularly uninteresting. The mule found most things uninteresting. It wanted nothing more than to plod on for hours and hours at its own unchangeable pace, ignoring the monotonous world around it.
“Good enough,” Sairu replied, and bobbed a curtsy as pretty as any to be seen among the handmaidens of Manusbau. “No thanks to you.”
“Did I ask for thanks?” The cat gave a long stretch, extending first one paw then the other, the tip of his tail brushing the arch of the gate. Then he fell in step beside Sairu. His shoulder blades scythed up and down with his sauntering tread. After a few paces, he glanced back a little nervously. “Where are the hedge-pigs?”
Lady Hariawan rode her donkey, the lion dogs surrounding her, their baskets strung from the creaking saddle. Dozing, they had not yet caught the cat’s scent.
“I’ll have you know that Dumpling, Rice Cake, and Sticky Bun are the noble offspring of the great Bright Ma
ne,” Sairu said, “descended in a long line of royal canines bred from the deified lineage of the Lordly Sun’s own watchdogs.”
The cat gave her a look. “Really?”
“Well, they come from the same kennels as the emperor’s dogs, so that’s close enough.”
“Useless yapping things, hardly what you’d call proper dogs. What’s the point of them?”
“They ward off devils.”
“Yet I’m still here. What else?”
“They’re fluffy.”
“I’m fluffy,” said the cat.
“You’re a monster,” said Sairu.
They walked on in silence. The road was broad but slanted toward the brink. Every few paces, Sairu would look behind to see how the slave in the sling was faring. The sling held true to its bindings, but she dreaded that a rope might give and he would fall to the road. Nothing would prevent him from sliding down the incline and over the edge only to be caught by the river’s waiting arms below. But the mule was sure-footed, and Sairu guided it carefully.
The cat took note of her concern. He trotted back to the sling and peeked over the bar. Then he scampered to Sairu’s side once more. “Handsome fellow you’ve rescued there,” he said. “Aren’t you glad I led you to him?”
“He’s a nuisance,” Sairu replied. “If not for my mistress, I would have left him behind.”
“I doubt that. He could be goblin-son ugly, and you’d have done just what you’re doing now. You, my dear mortal, behind that pretty smile of yours, have a heart of porridge. Anyone could see who bothered to look.”
But Sairu wasn’t paying attention. She studied the cat from the corner of her eye, all the while pretending to be intent upon the road. Then she asked, “What do you know of him, cat? Why did you want me to save him?”
“Who says I wanted you to save him?”
“You didn’t lead me to the slavers to free our guide,” Sairu persisted. “It was this one,” and she jerked her head back toward the sling, “you had in mind. Why? Are you two in league? Involved in some plot? Something to do with my mistress?” Curse that furry feline face! Even when she turned to look full upon him, she couldn’t read a thing.
“I’ve never met him,” said the cat.
Albeit reluctantly, Sairu believed him. But she maintained her equal belief that he had wanted her to find the slave. Yet another mystery to ponder. She faced the road again, guiding the mule around a large stone and checking to make certain neither of the pole-ends of her sling caught on it.
“Ah! My lady! My lady!” Brother Nicho, up ahead, turned suddenly, his wrinkle-shrouded eyes shining, his arm waving. “My lady, behold! Daramuti lies yonder!”
Breathing a sigh of relief, Sairu picked up the pace and brought the mule beside the monk, who pointed eagerly. There, up the trail about a mile, through twisting paths in the rock and nestled among thick green trees, she saw the outer gates of a temple. They were similar to the gates of the Crown of the Moon, only smaller and more weathered.
“We’ve made it!” she whispered.
“And no wonder, with you driving them like livestock,” muttered the cat at her feet.
Brother Nicho, still without a glance for the cat, took her by the hand. “Blessings upon you, gracious daughter!” he exclaimed. “You have liberated this poor man from great sorrow and despair and brought him once more within sight of his home. May Anwar and Hulan shine fair upon your face for all the days and nights of your life!”
“Yes, yes,” said Sairu, shaking off his hand but bowing politely as one should to a holy man. “Hurry now. We’re not there yet.”
The monk hiked up his long robe and started at a trot up the hill. His old lungs were used to the thin air of the heights, and he moved without apparent strain despite his age. But Sairu, now that their goal was in sight, suddenly felt very tired. She wanted to stop, to rest, to rub her sore, sore feet. No one in the party would complain. Although they rode rather than walked, she knew they were all as tired as she.
Her grip on the mule’s bridle tightened, and she forced herself onward.
“Daramuti,” said the cat, more to himself than to her. “A strange name. Why do I feel as though I almost know what it means?”
“Why wouldn’t you? You speak our language, do you not?” Sairu said, panting, for her heart rate was suddenly elevated with eagerness for the journey’s end.
“Not at all,” said the cat. “I understand it, and I can make myself understood. But some of the names escape me. Daramuti, for example.”
“It means starflower,” Sairu said. “The temple is named for the Gardens of Hulan.”
“Oh,” said the cat. “You don’t say.”
Sairu, startled by the tone of his voice, looked down. But he was gone.
A great, bellowing horn sounded to announce the imminent arrival of Brother Nicho and the convoy. The echoes rolled up the mountain even to the higher regions of the temple grounds, reaching the abbot where he sat quietly in the shade of his dovecote.
Brother Tenuk sighed at the sound, and it may have been a sigh of sorrow or of relief. Perhaps he himself did not know for certain which. He sat on a low bench where he could watch the opening of a nest hole. He knew what he would find if he dared to creep up to the hole and look inside: a reptilian eye of blood red gazing back unblinking at him. And around that eye would be feathers that were also strangely like scales. And the whole form would be much too large to fit into such a space, and yet it would fit, beyond all possibility.
He hadn’t the courage. So he did not look. Instead, whenever he could, he slipped up to this bench and watched the hole as though guarding his doves against the predator in their midst. So far, the creature that was perhaps a raven had not killed any of Brother Tenuk’s beloved beauties. Not yet.
And the abbot prayed that the Dream Walker, escorted by the Golden Daughter, would hurry up and get to Daramuti!
So when the horn sounded, the abbot breathed a sigh and his withered heart skipped a beat. This caused pain in his thin breast, but he scarcely noticed. Forcing himself onto his feet, he muttered, “It’s time! He’s come! And I’ll send him on his way!”
He had only to recognize the Dream Walker and then . . . well, he’d come up with some excuse to send him back to Lunthea Maly, an excuse that no one would question, not even the venerable Besur. He was clever. He’d invent something. For now, let him only recognize the Dream Walker, and everything else must surely fall into place.
Acolytes and under-priests met him on his way down the white stone path, every one of them shouting, “Brother Nicho has returned!” as though their poor, aged abbot hadn’t the wits to figure out as much for himself. Brother Tenuk growled responses and even took a swipe with his cane at a few of them as they ducked and bowed out of his way. By the time he neared the front gates, a path had been cleared before him so that he stood alone to greet Brother Nicho just as that good man passed under the arch and into the front courtyard.
“Brother. Dear Brother Nicho,” said the abbot, raising a quivering hand in blessing. “Welcome home.”
Brother Nicho dropped down to knock his forehead reverentially at the abbot’s feet, an untimely move that nearly got him trampled by the mule entering right behind him. The girl leading the mule smiled hugely and steered her beast to one side, neatly avoiding the prostrate monk. Then she too bowed, dropping to her knees and extending her hands before her as she pressed her forehead into the paving stones.
Brother Tenuk did not look at her. His gaze traveled instead to the figure in the sling that the mule dragged in its wake.
And he thought to himself, It is he. I know it. That must be he!
How he knew, he could not say. After all, there was nothing prepossessing about that figure, who indeed looked sick to the point of death. But Brother Tenuk had not come so far in his order without a dash of cunning instinct to guide him. And this instinct told him now, That is the Dream Walker.
He scarcely saw the other weary travelers who passe
d through the gate and made reverence before him. Only the excited barking of the lion dogs could draw his gaze away from the man lying in fevered pain to look at the temple girl riding in on her donkey. She alone of her company did not dismount and made no bow.
Her face was like ice: beautiful, perfect, shimmering ice. Even the partially shielding pilgrim’s veils could not dim the beauty of that face. Brother Tenuk blinked and wished to hide his eyes from her, even as he hid them from Anwar’s light. She must be a very great lady indeed to not bow to the Abbot of Daramuti.
Suddenly he felt his heart in his throat. It had been such a long time since feminine loveliness had evoked a response in him that at first he did not recognize what was happening. “W—welcome, Honored Daughter,” he said, making an appropriate motion with his hand and hoping that his voice did not betray his emotions to the brothers standing round. “I—I have received word of your coming, but not of your names or your purpose.” He did not ask for either. After all, he was quite certain he knew who this beautiful girl was.
The Golden Daughter. Sent to guard the Dream Walker.
She was his enemy.
Brother Tenuk thought his shuddering heart might break.
The lady on the donkey said nothing. She merely gazed upon him as though not quite able to see him. She wore the humblest of pilgrim’s robes, worn from long travel. And yet, somehow she seemed to Brother Tenuk as though gowned in fine silks and smelling of the sweetest perfumes.
Suddenly it was as though a tremor passed through the girl, and when it left her, her eyes were suddenly brighter and her gaze more alert. She fixed that gaze upon Brother Tenuk, and while he saw no recognition there, he saw command. He knew that when she spoke, he would obey her, whoever she was.
“I will go to my chambers at once,” said she. “See that they are prepared.”
Before the abbot even turned, several acolytes leapt into motion, hastening across the temple grounds to make a set of rooms fit for this unusual visitor. The lady’s gaze never left Brother Tenuk’s face, however. Brother Tenuk felt sweat forming on his brow.