Five Kingdoms (50 page)

“What if there’s a population?” he heard Tristus ask.

Alere had been perched upon a rock formation, looking over the shadows cast by fires that remained thus far unseen. He turned his head to look over his shoulder, placing Tristus more into his line of sight than Shirisae, who was stood more directly behind him.

“The purpose of our coming down here is to first and foremost learn what has been lying in wait beneath the city above us,” the Phoenix Elf said to Tristus.

“And to find a criminal, I believed,” Tarfan added.

“Yes, and that,” Shirisae said. “Though I don’t know that a man would risk sharing space with dragons or the keirveshen.”

“Vorhaven wasn’t opposed,” Tristus reminded.

“Vorhaven was no longer a man,” Alere said.

Tristus nodded, looking at him. “You’re right. At times, I still have difficulty separating out which parts of that experience were illusion.”

“I suspect that most of it was concocted of what was provided to Vorhaven from your own minds,” Xu Liang said when he returned to them.

“Yes, I suspect it was,” Tristus agreed. “I’m embarrassed to say that I carried a great deal into that house.”

A space of silence seemed to end the matter, but then Shirisae said, “You were also present in that house, Xu Liang.”

“My spirit was moving, drawn by the swords, perhaps. It is possible that I crossed paths with you. However, I did not linger. I was pulled toward another dream.”

“I feel that Vorhaven was able to draw a thread of your knowledge of and belief in your legends from your spirit,” Shirisae continued. “I observed the presence of men and women with Fanese traits and clothing in the room Tristus and I had come to.”

“Vorhaven also used your likeness to affect us,” Tristus added. “However, the illusion behaved very unlike you…both in my account and Shirisae’s. It was as seeing you precisely wrong, but in two different directions.”

Xu Liang accepted the information with a nod. “Since Vilciel, I have also experienced many visions. However, unlike the untruth of Vorhaven’s illusions—meant to deter and deceive each of you in one way or another—I have been shown the possibilities of the future from the realities of the past.”

“It is the clarity of the Phoenix,” Shirisae said at once, though not with the typical assurances and arrogance that often accompanied her words on the matter.

Xu Liang allowed the statement to linger in the open before setting it aside with his response. “I have come to accept that.”

Alere disliked the imposition of Shirisae’s religion and of the Phoenix onto Xu Liang’s spirit. It seemed a god, and the gods did as they liked, but it also seemed that the fire elves gave it access to unwilling hosts.

“Where would the elder have gone in such a place as this?” Tristus wondered.

“If there’s through access to the sea, he might be headed in that direction,” Xu Liang offered.

“How far away?” Shirisae asked.

“It would be a lengthy journey for him, or anyone, to make on foot. Days, at least. I would sooner anticipate that there is another access to the surface, which he plans to take or has already taken.”

“Isn’t it also possible that he’s laid traps along the way?” Alere asked, rising off his rock now.

“It is probable,” Xu Liang replied. “We must be on our guard.”

The underground grew
deeper and yet somehow more confined while they walked. Their careful pace provided ample time to notice the scarcely changing detail of rough walls and uneven—at times broken—floor. The entirety of it was dusted with sheets of loose rock and sand that had likely been displaced by the movement of a very large, somehow hidden creature. The lack of growth…perhaps the lack of collection of growth of either mildew, fungus—even of rock formations—made it apparent that the passages were frequently disturbed. Perhaps, Xu Liang was right. Maybe the tremors felt by residents of the city were indeed the movements of a dragon, tucked below the surface. It occurred to Tristus that if there was some route toward the sea, that maybe the dragon utilized it. It was possible that the beast fed on fish or even gulls that may have been inhabiting the potentially rocky shores. Considering such details helped Tristus to realize that it was only a very large animal.

Unfortunately, the realization didn’t carry as far as he hoped, since the giant sleeping upon the Flatlands was only a very large person.

A small dread wound itself at the center of Tristus’ stomach while he helplessly reminded himself how much of a challenge the ice giant had been, and to all of them. They had all very nearly died. And the Swords…

Tristus shook away memories of being within the dome of
Pearl Moon
while the giant beat upon it.

“What’s troubling you?” Alere asked just then.

“Something I refuse to believe isn’t troubling you,” Tristus answered.

“I’m troubled by it,” Alere told him.

His tone inspired the slightest of smiles—all that Tristus could muster under the circumstances. “You show it very differently.”

“You show it very actively.” As if to punctuate his statement, Alere gave a look over his shoulder at Tristus.

The elf was rather unbelievable, and in his way quite charming to Tristus. “Have you never learned mercy?”

“I found it a useless lesson,” Alere replied.

Tristus had heard enough. “I find you unbelievable, and by that I mean that I don’t believe you.”

“Quiet lads,” Tarfan advised from just in front of them. “Let’s not rouse anything out of its nest prematurely. I think the soldiers have spotted something.”

Tristus looked toward Guang Ci and Jiao Ren when the dwarf nodded in their direction. Somehow, the pair of them had managed to take the lead after their initial formation dwindled. There had been no need to keep it quite so tightly once they’d entered the caves. Room was not something the space lacked.

The champion of the Sun Blade and bearer of the Night Blade were slowed at what appeared to be a crossing. Xu Liang moved ahead to see what the matter was. Tristus began to realize at that moment how beneficial it would be for all of them to have the same language. He was not opposed to the journey of learning Fanese, but he imagined it would take a considerable amount of time to manage useful conversation with anyone.

A curious silence seemed to settle while they waited. The low voices of their Fanese hosts became a backdrop to a peculiar lack of sound. It was within those moments that Tarfan began to shift nervously from one foot to the other. Tristus looked across at Alere, who looked at him in return, confirming without words that something was amiss.

The sensation of movement radiated through Tristus’ heels. Looking down, he noticed some of the loose earth sifting over and around the heavier rocks. He gave another glance in Alere’s direction. The elf appeared to be bracing himself and so Tristus reset his feet as well, firming his grip around
Dawnfire
in the moment the spear began to glow richly. The sudden light was dense enough to nearly have a texture, as if it were a flame. Tristus turned his gaze from the brightness at the center of its glow and noticed the Dawn Blade was not alone. The twilight glow of
Aerkiren
seeped across the space between them, and strands of the Storm Blade’s greening silver radiance stirred forward, whispering energetically. Ahead of them the three remaining Swords formed a quagmire of color—brilliant blue staining across an inky cloud, striated with golden rivulets of sunlight. It took Tristus’ breath from him, leaving him none to spare for the thunderous roll of shifting rock that shook the cave next.

Xu Liang was
quick to raise
Pearl Moon
and cast its shield overhead. With the combined grace of the Phoenix, what tended to be a dome unfurled above all of the bearers like the letting out of a great cloak of protection. Rocks rained upon the silver-edged blue, tumbling in a succession of rippling energy while they were redirected toward other areas of the corridor. Shirisae was fascinated by the transformation underway—the manner in which the Phoenix had been gradually integrating itself into the facets of Xu Liang and his magic. It made her aware of how ignorant she had been about her own god, even as heiress to its power. She suspected there was much of the greater cycle of the Phoenix that her mother had not revealed to her, perhaps because she had not been ready. Her ignorance had caused her to leap to conclusions and judgments that were in these moments being deconstructed.

The shriek of the Phoenix filled the back of her mind, and it was then that the Dragon appeared. The sharply formed head of the beast lowered into view, dark amber eyes as smoldering torches in the surrounding shadow of the intersecting corridors. With breath like the roll of distant thunder, it looked upon the forms standing protected beneath it. The blue glow of the Moon Blade reflected off its deeply black scales, casting streaks of purple over its neck and chest. The intensity of its darkness was reminiscent of the Night Blade, the weapon Malek Vorhaven had coveted and which the keirveshen had gathered around. Was this gargantuan beast also one of the shadow folk?

As if in answer to Shirisae’s silent question, the dragon drew back its elongated head and then thrust forward with a piercing bellow that reeled waves of force into the air. It formed a seam across the surface of the Moon Blade’s shield, like a lance hurtled across water. The magic sprayed outward and around the physical shape of the dragon’s cry, and, again, like water, it quickly refilled the line that had been cut through it.

Shirisae presumed the shield had protected them from the full force of the sound, though it was still an assault on the ears and mind to bear witness to. She imagined one struck by the force and pitch of the dragon’s breath would be badly injured, if not killed. She was not afraid, so long as the protection of the Phoenix hovered over her. She was not afraid for the mystic either, for this was not the same man who had stood with only the power of himself to contribute to his sword’s magic. This was D’Jenti, the living incarnation of the Phoenix in its rising phase.

The dragon seemed to recognize the futility of continuing to strike. It withdrew itself from the passage opening and rushed forward in a terrible yet surreal commotion of sound and movement. Black limbs dragged its tremendous form across the cave entrance in a manner that was indeed like a bat, yet the musculature illustrated by the light of the Moon Blade bore the form and texture of a great lizard. The wings were folded as it maneuvered, tucked like a collection of dark sails taken from the masts of ghost ships on the seas of oblivion.

Its speed was incredible, and it took only moments to relocate its massive body from where it had evidently been tucked in sleep or hiding. In its wake, the earth continued to shudder.

Shirisae hurried forward, toward Xu Liang. The mystic maintained their protection, and when she arrived near him, he angled his head, enough for her to see that his eyes shone with the color of the Moon Blade. His expression remained his own, but she could see the fortification of the Flame behind it. She required no further confirmation as to what had transpired since the resurrection ritual, and what her mother had withheld from her.

“The dragon is coming back,” he said to her. “We must not face it here.”

That was all the inspiration she needed to act. She turned from him and took quick steps toward Tristus, Alere, and Tarfan. “We have to return to the surface. Now.”

Behind her, she could hear Xu Liang relaying orders to his fellows in Fanese. Alere, Tristus, and Tarfan were already turning around when the sounds of Guang Ci and Jiao Ren’s footsteps came. Shirisae took only a few steps with the others before turning back to Xu Liang. The mystic had pulled the shield forward, facing it against the mouth of the corridor, which disgorged boulders and chunks of earth against it. With nowhere to go, the rocks piled into a wall. It would likely not delay the dragon long, but perhaps long enough.