Five Kingdoms (36 page)

He placed the scabbard down upon the table and walked from his room, into the wide corridors of his house. When he came to the centermost passage he stopped, looking from one end of it, across its length at the large pair of doors that stood between his private home and the rest of the Imperial City’s innermost grounds; the middle court. The Court of Heaven was the working heart of Sheng Fan. Was it also the heart of Chaos?

There was no answer to be had in the middle of the night.

As quickly as the thought formed, it was overridden. There
were
answers to be had, and at once. Xu Liang proceeded down the passage, but stopped before the main doors. He instead took the entrance across from his office, entering the suite his guests occupied. These rooms typically hosted friends, family, or colleagues. Xu Liang determined that their function remained the same now, with his fellow bearers as residents.

He passed through the sitting area, intent on visiting the bedrooms individually in order to wake the others, but he was stopped by a silhouette in the window that looked upon the garden. A deep purple glow lingered near the individual perched there.

“The Twilight Blade speaks as well,” he said to Alere, unconcerned with the evident fact that the elf had seen about retrieving his weapon from the room they were to be stored in until their presentation before the Empress.

“I wondered when you would begin to hear the Moon Blade,” the elf returned.

“Wake the others,” Xu Liang instructed. He was not interested in questions or debate, and said immediately afterward, “I know where Chaos dwells.”

“There’s no rest
to be had,” Tarfan complained while he shoved his socked foot into his boot.

From the bed compartment across from the dwarf’s, Tristus was efficiently putting on the layers he’d come to Sheng Fan in. The clothes they’d had sized earlier were neither finished yet nor anything he would feel comfortable simply getting into on a moment’s notice. He imagined that if he were to be in Sheng Fan long enough, he would grow accustomed. He had certainly not been in Xu Liang’s country or his home long enough for that level of comfort yet. Besides, the manner in which they were being awakened, before dawn, felt urgent.

“I don’t know if it’s necessary for you to come,” he finally said to Tarfan.

The elder bristled immediately. “I don’t know if you know your own mind, pup! What involves one of us, involves all of us!”

Tristus stopped in the midst of fastening a buckle and looked over at the dwarf. “Of course, you’re right,” he said, and meant it sincerely. He refrained from apology, however, and resumed dressing.

Tarfan might have been prepared for argument, and relaxed slowly when none came, eventually making a concluding sound of affirmation. After a few moments, the dwarf said, “I’ve no intention of being caught alone here, if the mage is up to anything that offends anyone of authority.”

“That makes sense as well,” Tristus admitted while standing. “I’d feel equally awkward if discovered in Xu Liang’s house alone by those who may be riled by any action he has or hasn’t taken.”

Tarfan issued a nod of agreement.

When dressed, they convened in the common room with the others. It felt oddly like Vilciel all over again, but that Xu Liang was standing among them, unhurt, and Alere was present as well, rather than having ventured off alone. For a moment, Tristus lamented the absence of Fu Ran, but let it go.

“Since before I left for your lands, there has been the presence of something within the Imperial City,” Xu Liang began, wasting no time. Whatever had awoken him must have been supremely urgent. “It is a thing of mystery and foreboding. It has bred unrest within the city, and I believe it has contributed to the discord among the Five Kingdoms of Sheng Fan. There has been more aggression, more threat of outright rebellion—within the court as well as outside of it. The keirveshen have been a plague upon your lands. We have known no such beasts here in Sheng Fan, but perhaps there is something related.

“The Spirit Dragons of legend were the guardians of the Infernal Regions. As the Celestial Dragons fired the Blades of the Gods in their great light, it may be that the Spirit Dragons gave rise to the creatures of shadow.”

While Xu Liang spoke, Tristus was relating the spiritual significance to his own understanding of it. To him, it amounted to angels and demons. In Sheng Fan, there were dragons. The concepts were not difficult to connect. He felt as driven to defend against the Spirit Dragons, as he had felt bound to protecting the Church of Andaria from demonic forces. That he had somehow let such a force in on the Order was a failing that he felt he could atone for here, with Xu Liang as his guide. The Order Masters would be offended at the very idea, were they to know of it, but the mystic of Sheng Fan had proved spiritual devotion the equivalent of ten Order Masters. The entire staff of the highest leaders of the citadel had turned away from Tristus. A single officer of a foreign land chose to put faith in him, even after witnessing the part of Tristus that could have destroyed him. His soul remained with God, but his heart was now in Sheng Fan. He would not leave until it had stopped beating.

It was ironic that at the end of that thought, Xu Liang happened to say, “I have heard the heart of Chaos beating, within the walls of the Temple of Divine Tranquility.”

Various expressions of concern and interest were passed around the company. And then Guang Ci brought the Swords not already in the hands of their bearers into the room and laid them down upon the floor.

“We will learn whether or not there is a dragon present,” Xu Liang continued. “And if there is, we will know the task of the Blades.”

“And if there isn’t?” Tarfan inquired, perhaps on the behalf of all of them.

Xu Liang looked upon the glowing spears and the broad sword beside the longer weapons, and said, “Then I will presume the purpose of the Swords is war.”

The company rode
with Xu Liang from his residence by carriage—his guardsmen were on horse—through the lantern-lit corridors of the city, to threshold of a garden. From that point, they traveled a network of covered pathways by foot, through thick beds of plants which led them to a building that appeared a small fortress in its own right. There had been guards at two points along their path, whom Xu Liang had moved the group past without altercation. His station was well-recognized, or the men were his own. It was difficult for Alere to tell precisely how the structure of Fanese court was arranged. Xu Liang had claimed that he was among the Empress’ most trusted and relied upon, and he had not made the claim falsely, according to all observable evidence. Still, he was not the emperor, and Xu Liang had also stated that his actions and interests were not always popularly approved of by his peers. The act of leaving his homeland to look for the Swords had been criticized and advised against. Where there was criticism and difference of opinion within a political court, there was often betrayal and conspiracy. That much had been made evident with the assassination attempts that had already been made on the mystic’s life.

Ironically, and impressively, it had taken a true giant of the Flatlands to bring him down, and even that had not finished him. It had damaged him, however. And for that reason, the odds were shifting against him. The next attempt made on his life might succeed.

Alere intended to prevent it, but a political environment was more limiting than the wilderness. It would be no easy task to watch for threats, particularly since he preferred to look for them before they became imminent. It spoke of faith and of friendship to him that Xu Liang defied the caution, and even fear of his people by enlisting his and the others’ aid in the current task. If Alere’s own faith had been faltering in the last day, it was renewed now. Unfortunately, it was faith in the mystic, not his people. Trust of groups had been hard for Alere to manage since several groups of his own kin turned away from aiding his ancestors and more recently, his family.

Shirisae appeared remarkably aloof to the history of their people, which made it easy for him to find her detestable. She and her brother were twins, reflections of one another, neither of them instilling either trust or kinship in him. The fact that she carried the Storm Blade did not elevate her virtue as an elf, or as an individual. He had seen her selfishness and witnessed her meddling for her own benefit, even recently. She was more arrogant, because she—being an elf—could only be aware that on the nights she had not slept during their travels, he was also not sleeping. He had witnessed her interrogations of Xu Liang—he presumed for the sake of discovering whether or not Xu Liang’s heart may ever lean toward Tristus. Whether it did or it didn’t…whether it could or could not, it was not her place to attempt to determine and arrange where hearts would fall. He viewed her as an opportunist, and had held that view since her offer of god magic to aid Xu Liang. It was not charity on her part, but whim…the whim of a spoiled heiress. Alere had not been able to overlook it. He managed to be civil, which would do nothing to bond them as fellow bearers of sibling weapons.

Perhaps he would speak to Xu Liang of his feelings on the matter. Speaking to Tristus was fruitless, owed to the knight’s wont to see only the potential of good will in others. Alere found it a peculiar response to the betrayal the knight had experienced. But again, it may have been that Tristus had all the vengeance he required in the god that walked with him. The god whose spirit Alere had at times seen walking freely amongst them, even here. He did not see Ilnon now, but that seemed to mean that the god had found a pocket of Tristus’ soul within which to lie in wait, until it became time to tear to the surface again, spilling fresh blood through old wounds. If it wasn’t the god himself doing it, then it was something equally volatile.

Alere believed the same could be said about Xu Liang’s dragon. He had no doubt that there was something present.

At the door to the temple, it was Shi Dian who opened one side for them. He and his fellow guards who had survived the journey west—all but Guang Ci—were to wait outside and deter any who might interrupt the investigation. The guards assumed their stances and their master entered first, followed by the other Sword bearers and two tag-along dwarves.

Jiao Ren rushed
to dress. He had been awakened by one of his men, who found it important that Xu Liang had gone to the Temple of Divine Tranquility during such a late hour. At first, Jiao Ren found it important that the scholar might have gone alone, after what he and Huang Shang-san had experienced alongside him. He soon found that the importance was in the form of the five outsiders in Xu Liang’s company. Jiao Ren did not trust their presence within the Imperial City, in spite of supporting the Imperial Tutor’s theories regarding the Swords. It did not require Xu Liang’s opponents in the court to whisper at his shoulder about the threat outsiders posed and the liberties the Imperial Tutor had taken. He would not have trusted them, regardless. In that, he and the Supreme General agreed.