giant of a man, almost bald, with one eye obliterated by a terrible scar and a bristling black beard, but when he acted this contrite he looked eerily like a child caught doing something naughty.
“I'm really only interested in the sword,” Silvermoon said patiently. “Did you find it?”
“Yes,” said Bear Claw. “But I already told poor master Three Strides the sword would be no use. At least not here. Whatever forbidden magic Tsung Po is calling on to attack Mo Xan Dai, he is undoubtedly doing it from some safe remove. Probably crawled back into Lao Feng, I shouldn't wonder. Someone would have to strike him down in person for these visitations to stop.”
“Then I shall go and do just that,” Silvermoon said.
“My lady, no,” Bear Claw protested. “You're barely trained in any kind of martial art, you've never fought a real battle, and that place is a death trap.”
“Is the palace any better?” Silvermoon said bitterly. “Three dead already, and Tsung Po probably saved some especially terrible fate for me, if I stay. Torn apart in front of my own father, more than likely, or worse. I – I'm not a coward, but –”
Bear Claw was unmarried, had no descendants, and had often wished in secret that Silvermoon were his own daughter. Seeing her weeping, he patted her awkwardly on the head.
“The Dragon's Nape is almost two days' ride from here at full pelt,” he said. “With no food bar emergency supplies. Can you hold out for that long? We would have to leave right now.”
“It sounds preferable to the alternative,” Silvermoon said, and she wiped her eyes.
“Then let me fetch the sword,” said Bear Claw, “and we can be off.”
A word from Bear Claw saw one of the guard patrols diverted. Seizing this opportunity, he led Silvermoon out of the palace through an ancient sally port only he and the historians knew about. From there they passed into the streets of Mo Xan Dai. There was no hue and cry as yet: not so surprising, given most of the guards were unwittingly standing watch over Silvermoon's empty chambers. From there the two of them rode out of the city's east gate, as the moon rose over the highway.
For hours they travelled. At one point Silvermoon woke to find she'd fallen unconscious in the saddle, swaying like a doll in her seat while the master-at-arms held tight to her reins. They snatched brief swallows of warm water and chewed strips of dried meat while their horses clattered past farmers, pilgrims and wandering vagabonds who ambled along the highway.
At last the stark black outline of the Dragon's Nape sprang up across the horizon, and as night fell once again, Bear Claw turned off the main road and led Silvermoon through the foothills.
The expedition's shanty town still stood around the minehead. The settlement was a haphazard line of empty shacks, lean-tos, and tattered rawhide tents that sighed mournfully as the wind curled long fingers downwards from the peaks along the Nape. Bear Claw tied the horses to a hitching post and gave them the last of the water, while Silvermoon tried to nurse some life back into her aching legs.
Is Tsung Po even here? she thought. Perhaps he was just some crazy old man with a little talent for forbidden magic, and even now the guards have caught him breaking into the palace, while my father already has the headsman sharpening his axe...
But when Silvermoon closed her eyes she could still see Tsung Po's child Wu Bei, with her teeth bared, very sharp and numerous.
“Oh, he's here,” Bear Claw said, as though Silvermoon had spoken aloud. “This sword is very powerful. It acts like a lodestone, of sorts. If the bearer has something they're hunting, the magic in the blade can point out the way, wherever the quarry might have gone to ground. Lao Feng is a treacherous place, but not impossibly so. If you can keep up with me, my lady, I should be able to ensure your –”
“I need to go down there alone,” Silvermoon said.
“Your father will have me disembowelled for this,” Bear Claw said weakly.
“If I have to hide behind a rock while you confront Tsung Po for me I am going to hate you forever,” Silvermoon said. “And if you think you can... knock me senseless and go down there yourself, or something, I shall tell my father to have you thrown out of the palace. If I'm not eaten by wild dogs while you're off fighting my battles for me, that is.”
She hated to act like a petulant child, but Silvermoon felt convinced. She had to make the descent alone, no matter who or what it was waited for her in the flooded city. The journey was meant to teach her something, not stand back while someone else solved all her problems.
“It could work,” Bear Claw said grudgingly. “The sword glows in the dark a little – can you see it, if I hold my hands like so? And the magic in the blade should ward off lesser creatures. Be sure to keep that coat buttoned, mind; it's probably bitterly cold down –”
“Are you my nursemaid now?” Silvermoon said.
“This is serious!” the master-at-arms said. “Look, my lady, remember this, if nothing else: that sword is a Brand, a relic from the age of the Hong. The Brands were a gift from the northern barbarians, forged with the help of their tribal sorcerors, and the Hong emperors handed them to the most fearsome of their fighting men as a guarantee of their absolute loyalty. If they stayed their hand for any reason against an enemy of the realm, the enchantments on each Brand would mete out a horrible punishment for that moment of weakness. The bearer would still be, well, useful. But crippled. No threat on the battlefield. You need to be ready to –”
“This is a man who used forbidden magic to kill three honoured guests who were under royal protection,” said Silvermoon. The words came out so savagely she felt a little scared of her own voice. “He threatened the Lord Regent's authority and more than that, he put my father in danger. If I stay my hand knowing that, I deserve whatever penalty this... Brand exacts.”
Bear Claw bowed solemnly, and proffered the sword without another word. Silvermoon hung it around her waist, and walked towards the minehead.
There was a makeshift elevator atop the minehead. Silvermoon walked inside the cage, latched the door behind her and threw the lever to descend. Counterweights creaked and groaned as the lift swung downwards into the darkness beneath the Dragon's Nape. As the chain rattled through the flywheel overhead, it sounded as if the machinery itself were laughing at her. Darkness settled all around Silvermoon as the light from the surface rose out of sight, and before she knew it she could no longer make out even the walls of the lift shaft.
For countless long moments she felt herself dropping slowly through the rock, and then the cage came to a halt so abruptly Silvermoon bit her tongue. The door swung open of its own accord, onto a stygian cleft, a natural fissure that slanted down into the depths. The only illumination came from dimly glowing emerald fungi clustered in cracks running through the mountain. Silvermoon closed one hand around the Brand's hilt, unsheathed the sword and stepped out into the passage.
After perhaps half a league of squeezing between increasingly narrow rock walls, the passage suddenly opened up, and Silvermoon saw Lao Feng for the first time.
The sheer size of this subterranean metropolis astounded her, not to mention the ridiculousness of it. Lao Feng was built on a gentle incline that ran downwards through the Nape and divided across steadily deeper tiers. Inside the very mountains! Silvermoon hardly dared look up, and when she did it was a struggle to accept that yes, that was the sky visible through those titanic sword wounds in the rock, hundreds of feet overhead. And yet this natural ceiling showed no signs of imminent collapse.
But the devastation the flooding had caused the city was painfully obvious. Lao Feng was very grand, all towering fluted columns, giant archways and guardian statues, but the thoroughfares were choked with lakes of dark, brackish water where the eerie light cast by the fungi everywhere glittered like jewels. The houses had been shaken to rubble, and great cracks split the ground. Oddly, there were no bodies, and few bones. Perhaps scavengers had long since carried them off? Silvermoon had wanted to fear Lao Feng, but she was forced to admit Tsung Po's home
was more tragic than terrifying.
Downward and downward the sword guided Silvermoon, its power like an itch at the back of her mind. Here was safe footing, it told her, while over there the floor was ready to collapse. A left turn would take her further into the dead city, while a right was blocked off. Though Lao Feng was not entirely lifeless. From time to time bats fluttered across Silvermoon's path. Blind white fish swam listlessly in some of the deeper pools of floodwater, and once a pale, hulking beast fell into step with her in the shadows down a long, ruined colonnade. Yet it shrank back and fled into the darkness, snarling furiously, when Silvermoon held up the Brand.
The princess passed by the great staircase, and through the waterfall and down the banqueting hall where the three adventurers had found Wu Bei's hands, the little girl's eye and her diadem. All the while Silvermoon heard not a single voice, human or otherwise, save the sighing of the wind through the gashes in the Nape as it wound through the deeper levels of the city. And then the sword led her up. At its prompting she climbed a high, drunken spire, a huge tower of slick white stone so soft it felt rotten. The stairs crumbled under every step the princess took, but in the highest room, where a throne of oil-slick brass looked out across a vast