Five Kingdoms (47 page)

Six Celestial Swords

B
eneath the Temple
of Divine Tranquility, Han Quan was beyond the woes of the court. While he had not planned to execute this stage of his plan so immediately, now that events had passed, he felt it for the best. He had exhausted many of his resources within the Imperial City. Since Xu Liang’s return, he had made a last effort to move quicker than his young rival, but to no avail. When it leaped into his mind to simply kill him, he acted. In that moment, he wanted every member of the court to drop to their deaths. But he could only choose one. Of course, Xu Liang had been chosen. That it ended in failure was of little consequence, since he had possibly killed one of the Imperial Tutor’s precious outsiders. Let them debate about that for a while. If that didn’t create enough tumult to keep them occupied, Han Quan knew what surely would.

For forty years, he had planned this. For forty years, he had nurtured
her
growth.

Han Quan stood in the mouth of a cave—one of several that existed naturally by now beneath the temple. He held a lantern up against the tapestry of shadow and light, a low glowing off the rocks, rising up from narrow yet deep trenches that contoured the underground. In his other hand, he held a sack. The size of it and his lacking strength would permit him to take only a few of what he had come for, perhaps less than six. It would depend on their size.

He crept forward in the cave’s gloom, bending forward and sweeping the lantern low in order to see the floor in front of him. What he wanted would be in a deep recess, but not out of reach.

His foot slipped across a loose stone, causing him to lurch. He managed to keep his balance, but the stone rattled across the floor. A flurry of sound followed, as if the bats depicted on his robes had suddenly come to life. But it was not so near as that. Swiftly, he dropped the sack and raised his hand in front of him, reciting quick prayers that brought a sheet of smaller rocks and dust off the floor and around him. He cycled the small dust storm high, enough that the many small, winged forms in the darkness were dissuaded from diving at him.

“Not yet,” he said to them, looking up at the funnel of erratically lit dirt and the suggestion of forms beyond it. “Not yet!”

The forms fluttered about in reckless and frantic passes for some time before retreating to their shadows. In their absence, the greater darkness shifted and a low, rolling sound—like boulders tumbling over one another and simultaneously like the lions of the Heavens yawning at the arrival of the first men—filled the dimensionless space. Han Quan knew better than to harass this beast, and so he let his spell fall. Pebbles rained briefly onto the floor around him. There came a hint of light, dancing off a surface in the very near distance…an orb that may have been blind in the darkness, but its owner was far from ignorance.

“Soon,” he said soothingly to the living blackness.

Shirisae dreamed of
her mother, and for some reason she awoke with the masculine form of the Phoenix’s name ebbing on her lips. She whispered the syllables, “D’Jenti…”

“What?” someone asked.

He who is born in the Flame…

“Shirisae,” the voice came again, this time with the nudging hands of the young dwarf it belonged to. “Time to rise and shine, like you always do…brighter than is required.”

The jibe went largely unnoticed while Shirisae propped herself up in the Fanese bed. Her hair was still somewhat damp from the previous night’s excursion and her robes…

They were
his
robes. They were Xu Liang’s. The notion quelled what feelings of missing home she might otherwise have awakened with. Above the notion of who the clothing belonged to, it was what had finally, fully dawned on her.

“He is the Phoenix,” she whispered, looking at Taya, though the young dwarf seemed to not know what she meant. Shirisae didn’t explain. She further sat up, sliding her hands out from the overlong sleeves of dual-layered night clothing. Her hands felt cold immediately afterward, and not entirely because of the cooler air suddenly surrounding them.

“Who’s the Phoenix?” Taya asked next.

Shirisae shook her head. “Never mind. I…”

The girl dwarf put her fists on her hips. “I was going to let by the fact that you came back last night without telling me what happened, but now I’m going to insist that you tell me just what in the name of the Heartstone is making you practically tremble.”

“Am I?” Shirisae wondered, finding herself unable to fully transform the question into one of confidence—a tone that might otherwise have dismissed whatever it was Taya was implying with her observation.

“Yes, you are,” Taya said, and though she frowned, a note of concern edged into her voice. “Did something bad happen to Xu Liang? Did he collapse from strain…or have an attack of weakness…or—”

“No,” Shirisae interrupted. She took light hold of the dwarf’s arm, and in the process she startled herself with realization yet again. “He was strong, Taya.”

Taya appeared to be growing increasingly confused, and worried. “What do you mean? What happened?”

“Something that I myself have only just begun to fully understand,” Shirisae told her. “My mother transferred the Phoenix, via
Firestorm
, to Xu Liang.”

“Right…because it resurrected him…”

While Taya failed to commit to her conclusion, Shirisae said, “It has done more than that. It has cycled. When the Phoenix cycles, it takes earthly form through the body of one it has chosen.”

“I thought that was your mother.”

“A priestess of the Flame is a vessel, but for the waning period. Through
Firestorm
, the priestess keeps the Flame and guides by its wisdom. When a waning period is coming to an end,
Firestorm
is passed to her heiress, who will wield it in her name…the name of the Phoenix. At the start of a waxing phase, it is the blade that the Phoenix communicates through, choosing who will be the consort of the next incarnation. But we’ve arrived at a full cycle…an Awakening that will inspire the Phoenix to reach outside of its normal range in order to affect change. I thought that meant that it would travel outside of its realm, but through
Firestorm
, as Xu Liang’s cause seemed to require. Later, I believed that it had freed itself from the blade altogether and was merely traveling alongside the path of the one it had chosen to resurrect, to assist him on his path…but I see now that it’s more even than that. The Phoenix has chosen not who will help provide the next heiress, but an heir for itself…a male incarnation; D’Jenti.”

“So, that’s what that means,” Taya said, hazel eyes wide with both wonder and concern. A frown slowly formed. “But what…does that mean?”

“It means that Xu Liang has the strength of the Phoenix literally within him,” Shirisae answered. “I do not know what else that means—a cycle occurs so rarely that it’s possible that it will not be witnessed twice within the lifetime of any elf of the Flame.”

“But…he’s still Xu Liang. Isn’t he?”

“He could not be otherwise. The Phoenix does not take over, but augments all that is the person it travels within. It is a creature of rebirth. It exists in no constant form, but lives through the forms it takes.”

“Should we tell this to Xu Liang?”

“In his way, he knows,” Shirisae felt assured in saying.

“Well…should we do anything? I mean, what if it doesn’t work for some reason? Remember, it wasn’t his idea that he be resurrected.”

“If it could not work, Xu Liang would have died already. He has been chosen, and it is my duty, as the next Priestess of the Flame, to stay by him.”

“I’m not surprised
by this,” Alere expressed, in his typical mountain elf fashion, when Taya and Shirisae brought the morning’s epiphany to the others—all, but Xu Liang, who had not joined them yet.

“No?” Shirisae challenged, and Taya believed it was simply for the sake of challenge at this point, since the elf didn’t seem to believe there was ever room for even the most modest of doubts where her god came in.

“No,” Alere answered. “You and your brother were also both witness to the movement of the mystic’s spirit when he attempted to pin down Ilnon, after the god of vengeance went for the Swords. Your god, without question, noticed the opportunity before it.”

The look on Shirisae’s lovely face was not at all lovely in that moment. Taya wanted to cover her eyes before the two elves made another demonstration like the one that had started all of this back in Yvaria.

It was Tristus who spared them, saying, “Now, look, both of you. I’m not going to let you carry on at odds with each other like this, over powers that have clearly acted and events that are passed.”

Taya had never heard him speak in quite that tone. Apparently, her uncle hadn’t either; he raised his brow and looked from one elf to the other, like a witness to a pair of adolescents getting scolded. Both elves ignored Tarfan, but they were willing to pause on Tristus’ insistence, perhaps owed to his injury…or maybe the actions that caused it. Either way, Taya felt tremendous relief.

In the calmer air that followed, Tristus exhaled carefully. In a more familiar and gentle tone, he said, “I scarcely believe any of what’s happened leading us here. I would be lying to say that my instinct at first wasn’t to disbelieve anything about Shirisae’s god. But I was witness to it, and by now all of us have been in one way or another, even if it’s only through the simple fact that Xu Liang lived, when he should have died. If Shirisae believes that the Phoenix now moves with—or within—Xu Liang, then I must accept her claim and take it as seriously as the angel which passed
Dawnfire
to me.”

Tarfan opened his mouth, but was promptly silenced by the knight.

“No, Master Fairwind. Not a further word of doubt or argument will be accepted on the matter. There are greater powers at work in all that has been happening, and all of us are aware of it. I have a demon to bind me, if I let it and—if I let it—I have an angel to guide me. Shirisae has the Phoenix and now it would seem that Xu Liang does as well, along with his faith in his ancestors. The power of ancestral wisdom also inspires Guang Ci. Both of you dwarves have the strength of your Heartstone. And Alere has the tangible memory of his family, as well as his own gods to give him ballast in this terrific maelstrom of events. With all of that power, we cannot forget the one that all of us share, and that is each other. We’ve already proven what we can accomplish united. Let us not discover what may befall us and this world if we pull apart.