Waters Under Earth
A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic by Alan Harnum
-harnums@thekeep.org
-harnums@hotmail.com (old/backup)
All Ranma characters are the property of Rumiko Takahashi, first
published by Shogakukan in Japan and brought over to North
America by Viz Communications.
Waters Under Earth at Transpacific Fanfiction:
http://www.humbug.org.au/~wendigo/transp.html
http://users.ev1.net/~adina/shrines2/fanfics.html
Chapter 29 : The Halls of Night
I came by myself to a very crowded place
I was looking for someone who had lines in her face
I found her there but she was past all concern
I asked her to hold me, I said, "Lady, unfold me,"
But she scorned me and she told me
I was dead and I could never return
-Leonard Cohen
Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings
-T.S. Eliot
He was in a place where he might have been before. A small
building, open on all four sides, with the roof held up by four
broad pillars of red-gold wood, polished till they glistened
richly and held an inner glow like sunlight.
There was water flowing. He lay on the grass, dusky with
the scent of morning dew, just beyond the building. Soft and
yielding, the earth beneath his body was like a bed, fresh and
slightly damp.
He raised himself on his elbows, then stood up. His feet
were bare, and the blades of grass brushed softly against his
soles as he stepped into the building, walking on the white stone
floor that lay between the channels through which water flowed.
The round basin rose from the stone of the floor, with water
spilling always over the rim and splashing down into the channels
on the floor. A misplaced step dampened his foot, and he paused
to shake it dry, scattering bright pearls of water across the
milky stone of the floor. There had been music before, a sad
singing of the wind. Now there was only silence, the sound of
water flowing, the slap of his feet on stone as he walked to the
edge of the basin and peered in.
The woman who lay beneath the water in the basin wore a
garment spun of gold. It clung to her body like a second skin.
Hair spread out behind her head like radiating beams of sunlight.
This time, her eyes were open. The whites were golden, the
irises blue, but there were no pupils; the gaze was blank as a
china doll's.
Deep and bloodless wounds scarred the pale golden flesh of
wrists and throat, and something clear and pale as water,
flecked with gold and silver, bled from her. His heart ached at
the sight; beauty bound, beauty broken.
He stretched out his arms to bear her from the pool. She
breathed; somehow, terribly wounded, still she lived. He might
heal her. The power was in him to do such.
His hands touched the surface of the waters, and would go no
further. Flowing water was harder than ice, hard as cold-forged
steel. Her eyes stared into nothing, somehow accusing.
"I can't," he whispered to her sickly. "I don't know how to
help you."
The answer was the sound of water flowing. A sudden rage
filled him, and he drew his hands back and hammered on the
unyielding surface of water. Each time his fists smashed against
it, all the strength seemed to go from the blows, and he could
not break through.
At last, almost weeping with despair, he fell to his knees
beside the basin and rested his cheek against the solid, flowing
surface of the water in it. He could feel the movement of it,
like a ripple of silk over stone, but it was impregnable as a
wall of iron. "I don't know how to help."
"Do you even know if you should?"
He rose, turning at the voice. A woman stood at one of the
open sides of the building, booted feet on the grass. She had a
plain, middle-aged face, and a proud bearing.
"Who are you?" he asked, his eyes narrowed as he looked at
her.
"Who are you?" she countered, staring at him challengingly.
Her eyes were very dark.
There was no hesitation in his answer; it rose from him like
a bird taking flight from some dark place, invisible except for
the beating of wings. "I am the Lord of Waters."
"Ahh, but which ones?" the woman mused, stepping lightly
into the building, her shadow stretching out long and distorted
behind her. As if at her presence, the wind picked up, moaning
softly through the bamboo flutes placed at careful angles on the
underside of the roof.
"Which ones?"
She opened her arms expansively. "There are so many. There
is the river of time, which flows always in one direction. There
is the ocean of time, where all time is gathered at last. There
is the rain of time, which gathers from the ocean and falls upon
the river."
She spread her arms wider, opening her hands as if she might
gather everything within. "There are the waters which cradle the
worlds, and the seas of infinite darkness in which the stars
float, and the waters of the powers which flow beneath. Are you
lord of all of these, Lord of Waters?" In her voice, the title
sounded slightly foolish, a pretension.
He stood silent for a moment. "Maybe the last." He glanced
back at the pool of white stone, the prison of white stone. "Who
are you?"
For the first time, she smiled. "I was called Tanzei once.
I served the Lady for a time. When she asked it of me, I took my
leave of the river and came to the ocean."
He nodded. Somehow, he understood. "And why are you here?"
"I linger for a time," she answered. "Floating upon the
cusp of river and ocean, standing with one foot in either and
gazing into each. It is given to some of us, who are most
beloved, to do this that we might aid the flow."
Again, he looked back at the pool. "Why would I not want to
help her?"
"Would you doom the world for the sake of one?"
"What?"
She waved her hand, and the roof of the building blew away.
The sun seemed to go out, and the only light was from the pool, a
soft and muted gold that glittered in the pillars.
"Look up," she said gently.
He could not.
"Look up," she prompted again.
As if his body were not his own, he did. The sky above was
a sea of black scarred with the white lights of stars, vast and
hungry. Hundreds of stars, thousands, tens of thousands.
"Stars?"
"Not stars," Tanzei said. "Not these ones. Shadows."
"Huh?"
Overhead, the stars seemed to blur, shift and whirl, forming
half-familiar shapes, monstrous forms out of old legend and
forgotten nightmares. The wind keened mournfully about them; in
the channels on the floor, the water stirred with tiny waves.
"The Dark must lie beyond the Light until the end of time
itself, but the shadows it cast are transcendent of time. In
every world, they wait. Seeds of vengeance."
He turned a third time and pointed at the pool. "But what
does any of that have to do with this?"
Tanzei came to stand beside him, peering into the pool.
There was a sort of stoic grief in her eyes, a calculated
enduring of sorrow. "Sympathy and contagion. Can the prisoner
not be also the jailer, and the jailer also the prisoner?"
Reaching out, he pressed a palm flat against the barrier of
the water, as if paused while moving to touch his fingers to the
golden woman's throat. "I still don't understand. I only want
to help her."
"Again, I ask, would you doom the world for the sake of
one?"
He shook his head. "Must an innocent suffer for the sake of
the world?"
Tanzei reached out and put her hand next to his on the solid
flow of the water. "Innocents always suffer. Not everyone can
be saved."
"But if it is within my power to stop suffering," he asked
with a sigh, "how can I ever justify not doing so?"
"Suffering, perhaps not," Tanzei replied softly. "But do
you have the right to stop a sacrifice given freely? If the
burden is borne willingly, is it your right to take it upon
yourself, not knowing if you are even capable?"
He stared up at the sky, at the hungry stars and the seas of
dark. "I don't know."
There was a silence for a time. The stars swung in their
mad dance overhead. At last, Tanzei spoke. "To we who stand in
the waters of both the river and ocean of time is given the power
to see forward to the end."
He quickly turned his head to stare at her. "Tell me what I
have to do, then."
Her dark eyes were sad. He saw that there were strands of
white and grey in her black hair. "To see, but never to speak.
She reached out, placed her fingers upon the lids of his eyes,
and slowly, gently, closed them. "Do what you must."
*********
Ranma bolted upright, trying to remember how to scream.
(He met Akane fought Ryoga fought Shampoo met Shampoo met
his mother)
He was in
(Fought Mousse met Cologne fought Herb Saffron Tarou his
father)
a bed
(O waters of rivers and lakes and seas)
and he had to scream and could not remember how. He gasped
instead, shaking his head to clear away the disorientation.
Wiyeed looked back from where she sat brushing her hair at
an elaborately-carved dressing table that sat flush against one
stone wall of the room. "Awake at last, I see."
There were lights upon the walls, spheres of glass with a
bright spark held at the centre. Ranma stared without
comprehension at Wiyeed for a moment, and then closed his eyes
with a sigh.
"Where am I?" he asked quietly.
"My bedroom," Wiyeed said.
He groaned softly and opened his eyes again. "And why am I
here?"
Wiyeed put down her hairbrush amidst the clutter of the
dressing table. "The waters of the Lady often have adverse
effects upon those who contact them for the first time. I would
have been able to shield us normally when we travelled between
here and Jusendo, but..." She trailed off for a moment. "It is
nothing serious. Unconsciousness for a time, a mild amnesia at
most."
Ranma looked at her flatly. "And you didn't think to tell
me about this before we came?"
She shrugged and smiled apologetically. "I didn't think it
would ever come up. What occurred between Jusendo and here
was hardly ordinary."
"He was waiting for us," Ranma muttered, throwing off the
sheet and putting his feet on the floor. "Where's my shirt? My
backpack?"
Wiyeed gestured to a corner of the room near the bed, where
his pack lay against a small wooden chest of drawers, his shirt
draped across it. He bent down to pick it up, and heard a soft
rustle of cloth as Wiyeed walked up beside him. "May I see the
mark more closely?"
"Huh?" he asked as he straightened up, shirt in hand.
She pointed at his chest, a shy smile on her face. "The
tattoo."
"Oh, that," Ranma muttered. "Yeah, alright."
She stepped closer and lightly pressed her fingers against
the twining tattoo of the dragon that ran across his chest.
"Interesting," she said after a moment of silence.
"What?"
"It's a power focus. I've heard of them before. Tattoos,
ritual scarring, body paints. But this one is... different. A
part of you, almost."
Ranma shrugged. He'd heard much the same from Cologne.
"Yeah, I guess."
She traced the serpentine length of it with her index
finger. "Interesting..."
"What?"
"The shape, the texture, the feel..."
"Huh? What, the tattoo?"
She shook her head, and laughed softly, a slight flush on
her face. "No, your body. I..."
Ranma backed away. "Wiyeed!"
"I'm sorry," she said. "I know I shouldn't..."
She sighed. "I have very little experience with men. There
are none of them here, and we are isolated from the outside world
for many years while we study the ways of the Lady."
"Yeah, you told me," he said, turning his back to her and
tugging on the shirt. He began to fumble with the ties,
embarrassed. "Where's Kima?"
"In another room," Wiyeed answered. There was a vague trace
of hurt in her voice. "Why?"
Ranma glanced back. "I just want to know." He finished
with the ties. "How long was I out?"
"No more than two hours," she said, glancing to the floor.
He paused, lost in thought. Unbidden, a name rose to his
lips.
"Tanzei..."
Wiyeed drew a long, soft intake of breath. "How did you
hear that name?"
Ranma blinked. "I... I'm not sure. It just..."
He stopped talking. Wiyeed was gripping the back of the
ornate wooden chair that stood before the dressing table,
half-turned from him. In the mirror, he could see her eyes were
closed, and tears fell silently from beneath her lids.
"Wiyeed?" he asked finally, taking a hesitant step forward.
"What's wrong?"
"The last few days have been very hard," she said tightly, a
thin edge of a voice, rigidly controlled. "Very, very hard. I
have had little time to try and deal with all that has happened,
so I have simply not done so. I have pushed everything down
until I could not feel it any longer."
Another step, and he put his hands on her shoulders.
Underneath the soft black wool of her dress, she shook like a
leaf. He felt helpless; he barely knew Wiyeed, or anything about
her. Herb's sister. That was almost all of it.
"I always seem to do this eventually," he said quietly. "I
always end up hurting every girl I meet in some way or another."
Wiyeed didn't say anything for a long time. Her hands
gripped the chair's back tightly; long white hair, blue-slashed,
hung about and hid her face.
"It's not your fault," she said at last. "Tanzei was the
Highest One of the Lady before me. She died very recently, on
the same night our mother did."
Ranma stared into the mirror at the two of them. He was
surprised at how gaunt his face looked, and at the weariness in
his eyes. And how much Wiyeed looked like Herb had in his cursed
form.
Twins, of course. The themes repeat.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't know."
"How could you have?" Wiyeed asked. "Why did you say the
name?"
"I don't know," he confessed. "I... I've been saying and
doing a lot of things recently that I don't understand. I kinda
feel like I'm different people all the time."
To his surprise, she laughed. "Everyone feels that way.
Everyone is." She looked back at him, and raised a hand to wipe
at the tears on her cheeks. "Have you been having dreams?"
He nodded. "Yeah."
"I understand why you knew her name, then," Wiyeed said.
She moved away, dropping his hands from her shoulders, and turned
to face him. "You are the Lord of Waters, Ranma. It is no
surprise that you feel as you do."
Ranma studied his face in the mirror, tracing with his eyes
the lines and definitions. Somehow, they seemed unfamiliar.
"You called me that when you met me. The Ravager called me that
too."
Wiyeed visibly shuddered. "Cursed be his name until the end
of time."
"Why do you call me that?" Ranma prompted.
Wiyeed looked down for a moment in thought, her hands
clasped in front of her. Finally, she spoke, or recited, as it
was.
*After the dragon's descent*
*After the phoenix's fall*
*At centre of the rivers*
*Let the Lord of Waters call*
She stopped, and looked slightly embarrassed. "The title
repeats many times. In the poetry, the stories, the songs of the
Dragon Tribe, the records of them. There are only fragments of
the originals left; most of what we have are translations." She
closed her eyes. Ranma stood in silence; there was a distance
between them now, vast as any ocean. "So much was destroyed when
the Ravager came. Wurdsenlin was levelled. Dead sand stands
where the beauty of it once was."
They had seen it destroyed in the place between the waters.
The Ravager had shown them that, his great triumph, the black
fire washing through the emerald and jade forests.
"So I'm the Lord of Waters, huh?" Ranma said finally. "How
does that explain any of what's happening to me? My dreams, my
power, my..." He drew a long breath. "You don't know any of
this, I guess. I lose control sometimes. I've done things I
shouldn't have done because I wasn't in control."
"I know a little of it," Wiyeed said. "The Lady showed me
some. You... what you did..."
"I've heard it all before," he snapped, clenching his fists
at his sides. "It won't do any good to hear it from you either."
Wiyeed took a step back from him, hurt showing on her face.
"I..."
Almost instantly, he felt ashamed. "Sorry. I shouldn't be
snapping at you. You've been nicer to me than almost anyone
since this whole thing started."
She smiled brightly. She was, Ranma noted again, very
pretty. "Thank you."
The serious look dropped back onto her face a moment later.
"We are taught that water is the element most attuned to the
soul, to the world beyond the physical. Time can be seen as a
great river. At its end is an ocean that holds within itself all
of time. When we die, we go upon that river much faster, and
come to the ocean. There, our soul mingles with every other soul
that has ever made that journey. In time, we are gathered as
rain, and fall back upon the river at some point."
"Reincarnation?"
Wiyeed looked thoughtful. "Of sorts," she said finally.
"But not of the individual, separate soul. In time's ocean, all
souls flow together. The waters of that ocean fall again as rain
upon the river, and each raindrop, each individual soul that will
fill a physical body, has the memories of many others within it.
"Certain types of souls gather together. It is the will of
the waters that it be done that way, that the river of time might
reach the end when it must. The river began, so it must in time
end, but a river can end before its time, and there are forces
that seek to do so."
Ranma nodded. "The Dark and the Light."
Wiyeed smiled. "Names are useful things, are they not? But
they are only that. We seek to understand in our terms what is
beyond our understanding on its terms. Time is a river. Time is
a tapestry. A wheel. A book. Which is the truth? All."
"I've had dreams where I was other people," Ranma said. "I
can do things with my ki that I shouldn't be able to do, and I
don't know how. Is that why?"
"You are the Lord of Waters," Wiyeed said. "You are one
whose coming has been awaited for thousands of years. We have
waited so long for you, champion."
She stepped forward and reached out, cupping the side of his
face with one hand. There was a reverence in her eyes, a strange
sadness, a sort of joy perhaps. "We have waited so very long."
"I don't know if I can..." he stuttered.
"Enough," she said abruptly, cutting him off. "Forgive me.
I take too many liberties here. We can discuss this later. We
need to talk with my brother and the Phoenix Tribe's
representative. Time is short."
"What makes you say that?"
She stepped by him and opened the door. Beyond, a long
hallway of stone stretched out, and Ranma heard a faint trace of
what sounded like singing. "Something the World-Hater said when
he had us trapped. Do you remember it? What he first said to my
brother?"
Ranma thought for a moment, and then slowly nodded. With
the memory, there came a premonition of sorts, perhaps of the end
towards which everything was heading, inexorable as a great
river, and a slow, invisible shiver ran down his back.
**********
(Wake up, Herb.)
He groaned and turned over, still asleep, clutching the edge
of the sheet and twisting it around his body like a shroud.
(Wake up, Herb.)
"No..."
(I'm still HERE, Herb. Let me in. We'll have so much fun
together, Herb. There are so many things I have to show to
you...)
A slow trickle began at the edges of his mind, like oil
seeping in. Caught in the throes of the dream, the Musk prince
tossed and turned as he slept.
(Let me in, Herb. Please?)
A note of desperation in the lovely voice, pleading. The
trickle became a flood, a roaring assault against him. The tide
of slick foulness filled his ears as if to bursting. (LET ME
IN!)
He screamed and woke. Panting and covered in sweat, he sat
up in the bed he had been placed in. The room was dark. After a
moment, he raised his right hand and absently tossed off a spark
of his power to light the darkness. It bobbed in front of his
hand, and the light swam across the silver and the jewels of the
seven-fingered shape.
(I'm here to stay, Herb. We'll be together forever.)
"No," Herb whispered. He stared with horror at the hand. A
scarlet ruby winked at him from one knuckle; a bright pearl wept
pinpoint spears of light upon another.
(Oh yes,) the beautiful voice hissed. (Forever.)
No scream this time. Simply an awakening in silence, his
heart pounding within his chest like a drum, his hair falling
damp and loose about his face. The room was not lain in darkness
as before; lights burned, suspended in glass spheres that rested
in niches on the wall.
He threw off the sheet and got out of the small bed,
clenching a fist angrily. Nightmares; a child's weakness, not
something worthy of a man. He wore his tunic and pants; the
burnished, gold-scaled plates of the ornamental armour lay in a
neat pile by the bed, his cape folded beside. The room was
small, bare of anything but the bed and a small table on which
his slippers and hair clip rested. The stone floor was oddly
warm beneath his bare feet.
He strapped on the plates of armour with practiced care, and
sat back on the bed to pull his slippers on and clip his hair
back. He wondered how he had gotten here; the last events he
remembered were a blur of confused images; light and dark
intertwined, his sister's dagger buried in the Ravager's eye,
Saotome burning so bright with power that he had been forced to
look away, a howl of rage that seemed to split the very air in
two, and then a long, deep fall into darkness.
Grabbing the handle of the single wooden door in the room,
he pulled it open and stepped through into another bedroom. It
was bigger than the one he had been in, with carefully-carved
furniture in the corners and a large bed dominating the centre.
As he closed the door behind him with a sharp bang, he
realized there was a girl in the bed, lying on her back, the
sheets draped over her defining the contours of her body. Dark
hair spread out behind her head on the pillow.
Herb felt something stir deep inside him, ugly and dark and
hateful. The pitiful weakness of his cursed form came rushing
back, the strange desire that had risen against his will at the
sight of the transformed monkey in the pool, his hatred of that
loss of control.
And the rage; the blinding, red rage. The curse of their
line, Wiyeed had said; the minds of the men could be touched by
the World-Hater, their will shifted to become his own. With
surprising ease, he pushed the almost instinctual anger at the
sight of the girl back down.
There was a chair beside the bed. Not knowing precisely
why, he sat down, arranging his cape to one side as he did. He
placed his hands on his knees and looked at the girl more
closely.
Her features were very fine, sharp and slender. Her skin
was very pale; the lush darkness of her hair framed her face in
contrast.
He wondered if she had any clothing on under the sheets. He
reached a hand forward to draw them away, and then pulled it back
a moment later, not knowing precisely why.
He stared at her. He did not understand the oddness of the
feeling that had risen in him now, unlike anything he had felt
before, utterly unlike the rage. He thought...
He thought she was beautiful. The most beautiful woman he
had ever seen. Not that this had been a very great number, but
something told him that he would see few as fair as she was in
his lifetime.
Hesitant, he reached out and lightly touched his fingers to
her cheek. Her skin was cold, but as he touched her, he felt the
warmth begin to spread between their flesh.
Herb of the Musk sat like that for what seemed an eternity,
as helpless to move as if he were bound in chains. He could not
take his eyes from her face; long, dusky lashes trembled
slightly as he watched, an involuntary motion of sleep.
The girl suddenly moaned softly, a fearful sound as if she
were dreaming some nightmarish vision. One of her hands came out
from under the sheets, and clutched almost spasmodically at the
air.
Without entirely understanding why, Herb took her hand in
both of his. "It is alright." He was still unable to look away
from her face. "I'm here."
Her eyes opened. They were very dark, deep as a pool of
water in the depths of the earth. She stared into his eyes, and
Herb felt something like an electric shock pass through the air
between him. And he felt the hard, hateful anger that he was
holding in check disappear.
It had been with him for so many months now; since the
disaster at Jusenkyou, the bare edge of control he had always
kept over his temper had blurred more and more. It had become
part of him. And now it was gone.
For the first time since he had gone to Jusenkyou, Herb felt
true peace. A calm settled over him, and he gazed into those
dark, beautiful eyes as if he might do so forever.
"Who are you?" the girl asked finally, breaking the silence.
"My name is Herb," he replied, almost stumbling over those
words. His mouth felt dry. He had never had to talk to a girl
like this; he didn't know what to do. She was staring at him;
she seemed to be expecting him to go on.
He fell back at last upon what his tutors had taught him in
his youth, about the courtly manners and the proper way of
addressing nobility. "And may I ask your name, my lady?"
She was silent for a moment. "I..." Confusion showed on her
face suddenly. "I'm not sure."
Suddenly, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What are you
doing here? How did I come here?"
She pulled her hand out of his and sat up in bed, clutching
the sheets to her body in such a way that Herb's earlier question
of whether she had any clothing on was answered quite
conclusively. "Get away from me."
His first and natural response was anger; he was a prince of
the Musk, with the blood of dragons in his veins. He was not to
be spoken to in such a way. As it was, however, he gave into his
second response.
"Please," he said quietly. "Don't be afraid. I swear I
will do you no harm. I will let no harm come to you, my lady."
Still she glared at him, her hair loose and tangled about
her face. "Why should I believe you?"
He could find no answer. He raised a hand slowly, and she
shied back from him. "I..."
He slowly forced his voice to steady. "I am a man of my
word."
To his surprise, her expression softened, and she smiled.
"I do believe you are. I have been asleep for a long time, and I
believe you have been here for a time as well. You did not harm
me then, when it would have been easier."
She glanced around the room, and then down at the sheet she
held over her body. "Would you happen to know where my clothes
are?"
Herb shook his head, flushing slightly. Oh, but she was
lovely. "I fear not."
"Would you happen to know who I am?"
Again, he shook his head. "No. Do you remember anything?"
"Not about who I am," she said quietly, leaning back against
the carved headboard of the bed and arranging the sheets slightly
more chastely around herself. "I..." She paused. "Roses..."
He leaned forward slightly in his chair. "Roses?"
"I remember roses, for some reason," she answered, cupping
her chin thoughtfully with one hand. "I..." Trailing away into
silence, she shook her head. "I don't remember anything else."
"Not even your name?"
She nodded. "Not even that."
He hesitated. "Shall I call you Rose, then?"
A thin smile bloomed on her face. "If it pleases you to do
so."
"It does."
She glanced around, then cocked her head to one side and
frowned. "Now can you tell me where we are?"
He laughed. "Actually, I'm not sure myself."
Rose shrugged and laughed, a sound that left a warm feeling
in his heart. "We both seem to be in similar situations." She
paused, then laughed again. "Although you, at least, can
remember your name. I don't even remember that, or where I'm
from, or anything else."
"You are from Japan," Herb said.
She stared at him blankly. "How can you be sure?"
"You spoke it when you first woke," he pointed out. "And
you have no trace of an accent."
"Are we not in Japan?"
He shook his head. "China."
"But you spoke first," she said. "And you spoke Japanese.
How did you know?"
He had not even considered it, but she was right. He had
known, somehow. "I think it must have been luck."
She was still staring at him. "Your eyes."
"Hmm?"
"They're red."
He blinked. "Of course they are."
"Why?"
For a moment, he considered the question. "I have a rather
unique ancestry."
She was silent, studying him. "They suit you. I
remember... something about eyes. Something important."
"What do you remember?"
"I remember history, geography, books that I've read,
things that I've learned..." A growing distress showed on her
face. "But I don't remember... me. I don't remember my parents,
or my house, or what I liked and didn't like, or..."
"I'm sure that you will remember in time," Herb assured her.
Rose nodded. "I hope so." She gestured towards a large
wooden chest of drawers in one corner of the room. "If you would
turn your back for a few minutes, I shall see if I can find
anything more modest than these sheets."
Herb suddenly realized he had been holding an actual
conversation with a girl, for several minutes now. It had been
so easy; so completely natural. He couldn't remember the last
time he had talked to someone like that.
She had turned away from him and placed her feet on the
floor. The sheet she held before her covered her back much less
adequately than the front. Involuntarily, his eyes traced the
slender arch of her spine, before he forced himself to look away.
He ended up focusing intently upon the only other door in the
room, opposite the one he'd entered through.
Behind him, he heard soft footsteps crossing the floor, a
drawer sliding upon, the whisper of cloth. He realized his heart
was beating fast; the temptation to look back was almost
unbearable.
"You can look now."
For all that temptation, he turned with what seemed to him
great slowness. Rose wore a dress identical to the one his
sister did, soft sable-coloured wool belted with a braided yellow
cord. She had tied her hair to one side in a long ponytail with
a red ribbon; for some reason, it suited her.
"Well?" she asked. "What do you think?"
The dress fit her body like a glove. She was tall for a
woman, long-limbed and slenderly built, and yet there was no
fragility in her, but a splendid, lush beauty.
"You look nice," he said cautiously.
She laughed. Somehow, it made him feel good to hear her
laugh. He rose from the chair and crossed the floor to stand in
front of her. He did not understand his own ease with the
situation; past a certain point, the inexplicable can only be
accepted and dealt with on its own terms. In some circumstances,
the centre is lost, and a new centre is forged from which to act.
"Your clothes are very nice as well," she said, looking him
up and down. "I would almost think you are royalty."
Herb grinned. "Actually," he said casually, "I am."
She curtsied slightly. "Your highness."
It was said mockingly. Not in the way one should talk to
royalty. He laughed. "Lady, the pleasure is mine."
"Let us share it equally then, and keep it at that."
Slowly, he nodded. She took a step forward and reached out
a hand towards him; Herb felt frozen, as if he were made of ice.
Lightly, she touched the side of his face, traced a line
from cheekbone to the pointed tip of one ear. "You do not look
like any man I remember seeing before. Yet... still, you are
very handsome."
Suddenly, he could move, and he did, taking her hand in his
and holding it near his face. Her skin was soft, and the scent
of her filled his senses, cool water and a faint trace of roses.
Again, there was a crackle through the air between them, a
soundless thunderclap. He could see from her eyes that she had
felt it as well.
Herb stood and looked into those dark eyes, as if lost
within them. Finally, he managed to find the words. "And you
are..."
The door opened. As if struck, the two of them each took a
step back, breaking the contact of their hands. Wiyeed stood in
the doorway, hand on the knob, her eyes wide.
She looked from him to Rose, and a slow blush spread across
her face. "Pardon me, please. I was unaware that..."
Herb waved a hand in her direction and gave Rose a slight,
apologetic smile. "My sister."
Rose nodded. "I see the resemblance."
Wiyeed stepped into the room, still blushing and trying not
to look at Rose. "Brother, we require your presence."
"Perhaps later?" Rose asked before he could answer. "We
were... occupied."
Wiyeed's blush deepened, and she stared at the floor for a
long moment. Finally, she sighed and waved a hand at Rose. "Go
to sleep."
Herb's practiced eyes saw the slight glow of her ki, and
then Rose made a soft, breathy sound and began to crumple. He
stepped forward and caught her under the arms, shooting a glare
at his sister as he did. "What are you doing?"
"Now is not the time to deal with this," she said primly,
folding her arms in front of her. "You can talk to her later.
She shouldn't be awake anyway; it's dangerous to wake her too
soon. I didn't expect you to be awake so early either. Do you
remember everything?"
Herb nodded. "Of course." He glanced to the girl in his
arms. "And why can't she remember anything?"
Wiyeed winced slightly. "I'll try to explain later. Right
now, we all need to talk. The Dark is rising against us,
brother, faster than even the Lady had feared." She sighed
again. "Put her in the bed and come with me."
Turning away, Herb carried Rose to the bed and carefully
laid her down. She murmured softly in her sleep as he did,
turning slightly away from him. Her tail of hair fell across her
face with the motion, and he lifted it away. After a moment's
thought, he untied the scarlet ribbon and took it from her hair;
it came away in his hand with a single long strand of glossy dark
hair. Hoping desperately that Wiyeed could not see what he was
doing, he tucked them both into his sash and turned away at last
from the sleeping girl.
His sister looked as uncomfortable as he felt. "Come on,
Herb."
She opened the door and stepped out ahead of him, leading
him in silence down a long, narrow, empty hallway. Often, he
heard a faint sound, as of voices singing, coming down from
somewhere far away. Glass globes like the ones he'd seen before
threw patterns of light across the polished stone walls layered
with dust. Every dozen steps or so, a niche was placed in the
wall, holding some ancient-looking piece of pottery, or a
fragment that looked like it might have come from a statue.
As they turned a corner, Wiyeed paused by one niche. It
held a jagged half-circle of flattened silver, pure and polished
so brightly that it cast a perfect reflection. "All these are
artifacts that have been found over the centuries in the Desert
of the Claw, where Wurdsenlin once stood."
Herb stood and stared. The Desert of the Claw lay north of
the lands of the Musk, beyond the spine of the mountain ranges,
and was a wasteland of sand and rock where nothing living grew.
"So easily does beauty fall," she murmured softly, picking
the fragment of silver and tilting it back and forth, making the
light dance across the walls and floor. Again, a fragment of
singing drifted to Herb's ears, so soft and faint he could make
out no words.
He looked around, as if seeking the source. "What is that
sound? Singing?"
Wiyeed smiled, replacing the artifact carefully in the niche
and turning to look at him. "The home of the Lady and her
Daughters is a mountain at the northern edge of the Desert of the
Claw. In a room at the very apex of that mountain, one of her
Daughters sings to her glory. Night and day, song flowing into
song as the next singer takes it up from the tired voice of the
one before, a music that has not ended in fourteen centuries."
"How many of you are there?"
Her smile faltered. "Perhaps a hundred. It used to be that
women skilled in the art of magic would come from all of Asia to
study with us. Now, we are all but forgotten. Many of the
female children of the Musk come to us, and a few others are
drawn here."
"So that explains why everything is so dusty," Herb said,
running his finger across a wall and leaving a long trail against
the stone.
His sister scowled. "We have more important things to do
than serve as housekeepers for guest quarters that seldom have
any guests."
Herb snorted. "That is what servants are for."
"There are no servants here but us."
"How strange," Herb murmured as they began to walk again.
"There are no men here either, are there?"
She shook her head. "The Daughters of the Night were
founded by the members of Fukwan's circle who did not betray the
Dragon Tribe. They had barely escaped the carnage of Ganziao's
reign, and they remembered well what the men of the Musk had done
to their wives and daughters at his orders."
Ganziao the Founder. Ganziao the Mad. And a third name,
one that the Musk did not like to speak amongst themselves;
Childkiller. What the Musk had been in the first three centuries
of their existence was a thing best forgotten, or at least not
spoken of.
They turned another corner, past a niche holding a dull and
tarnished spearhead of some strange bluish-hued metal. "Ganziao
was under the domination of the World-Hater?"
Wiyeed shook her head. Another turn, and they were climbing
a flight of stairs that twisted slightly as they rose. "All that
Ganziao did at first, he did of his own free will. The evil of
his actions were so great that it allowed the World-Hater that
first entrance into his mind, and passed that handhold down to
all the men of the bloodline."
"And yet Jinlung defied him, even with that?"
Wiyeed smiled briefly, sadly. "The child need not always
follow in the path of the parent."
"But how did he..."
Wiyeed shook her head, and he trailed away. A fragment of
that eternal singing came again, and now he could hear the words,
for only a moment, before they drifted away.
*Lady of silences, Lady of peace, Lady most fair, cradle us,
hold us, shelter us...*
His sister gestured to a small wooden door. "Ranma Saotome
is in there already. I must go and fetch the woman of the
Phoenix; I shall not take long."
"Where are Mint and Lime?" he asked.
A brief smile traced her face. "They will be out for a long
time. Don't worry about them making any trouble; we have ways of
keeping them under control."
She swept off down the corridor without another word. As
Herb put his hand on the door and began to open it, he remembered
suddenly that he had never managed to get her to tell him
anything more about Rose.
**********
Ranma stood at the edge of the balcony, and rested one arm
on the slender, elaborately curled iron railings as he stared off
into the night. Stars sprawled by the thousands in the dark sky,
a darkness mirrored below by the blank expanse of dark sand that
was the desert. It stretched off to the south to beyond the
vanishing point of the horizon.
The valley that held Jusenkyou, he knew, lay beyond it.
Wiyeed had told him that the lands of the Musk lay in the far
north of the Valley of the Waters, amidst the mountain chain
called the Dragon's Ribcage. The desert was named the Desert of
the Claw. And this place, the mountain that held the Daughters
of the Night and the one they called The Lady, was Chenmo Shan -
Mount Silence - part of the mirroring chain of the Dragon's
Ribcage, the two long strings of mountains that had bordered
Wurdsenlin four thousand years ago.
Now Wurdsenlin was the Desert of the Claw, and Ranma stood
drinking cool, sweet water from a goblet of ebony glass, his eyes
gazing out across the wasteland where it had once lain.
Silence, this place was called, but there was not silence.
There was the sound of water rushing down over stone, from the
half-dozen small waterfalls that came down the sides of the
mountain that he could see. Hundreds of feet down, they
disappeared under the cover a long, overhanging strut of rock.
And there was the singing, drifting down from the highest
peak of the mountain. Wiyeed had explained that to him as well
as they'd walked from her room to this one. Once, they'd
encountered a half-dozen girls dressed as she was, and they had
shown a large amount of interest in him until Wiyeed had
dismissed them.
Mount Silence reminded him of Mount Phoenix in some ways;
the long halls of stone shaped from the mountain seemed desolate,
fallen greatly from what they had been. There was too much
space, too many empty places.
He sipped his water again. The taste was incredibly pure,
sweet as wine and lingering on the tongue. Lowering it, he
sloshed water against the sides of the cup and examined it.
Oddly, it seemed unusually dark, shadowy. Perhaps it was only
the light. In the sky above, the moon waned, losing fullness
with each passing night. A gust of night air chilled him
slightly, and carried on it the words of the singing:
*Lady of silences, Lady of peace, Lady most fair, cradle us,
hold us, shelter us, Lady, Lady, Lady of silences. Calm and
distressed, torn and most whole, end of the endless, journey to
no end...*
He was interrupted in his listening by the sound of the door
being opened. He turned to see Herb stepping into the room, his
long golden cape fluttering behind him. The prince closed the
door behind him with a click, as Ranma walked back into the room
from the large open-air balcony he'd been standing on, brushing
past the black and gold curtains that might be drawn closed to
separate it from the rest of the room.
"Hey Herb," he said, raising his free hand.
Herb acknowledged him with a nod. "Greetings, Saotome."
Without a second glance, he sat down on the floor, at the long,
low table in the centre of the room. The walls were covered with
finely-woven silk tapestries - dragons and phoenixes and other
legendary creatures, legions marching to war, a mountain cloaked
in mist - and a few folding screens on which peaceful scenes of
river and forest were sketched in dark ink were arranged about
the room. A single huge carpet in black and gold, dragons
twining with dragons, covered the floor.
Ranma sat down across from him. Seemingly lost in thought,
Herb poured himself a goblet of water from the fluted glass
pitcher on the table.
"Where's Wiyeed?" Ranma asked after a moment.
"She went to fetch your friend," Herb told him, sipping the
water. From a bowl of fruit on the table, he picked a small
orange and began to neatly section it. "Why is she cursed to
look like that... fiancee of yours, wasn't it?"
"Long story," Ranma said. He drank the last of his water
and set the glass down with a clink. "Very long story."
There was a silence between them. Herb devoured the orange
with almost mechanical precision. Ranma broke it at last.
"Herb?"
Herb looked up inquiringly. He looked very much as if his
mind were on something else.
"Don't you ever talk to Kima again like you did before,"
Ranma said in a low voice. "If you do, I'm not going to be very
happy."
Herb's eyes narrowed. "I had my reasons for what I said,
Ranma. Try and consider them."
Ranma caught Herb's gaze and matched stares with him for a
long moment. "I don't care what your reasons were," he said at
last. "The only reason I'm not madder than I am is because I
think you really would have stayed to fight the Ravager by
yourself if it meant the rest of us could have gotten away."
"I owe you a life debt," Herb replied quietly and simply.
"My life falls before yours. I have a similar obligation to my
sister."
"And would Mint and Lime would have stayed too?"
Herb snorted. "Mint and Lime do what I say."
"Would you have made them stay if they didn't want to?"
Herb said nothing for a time. When he finally spoke, there
was an odd note of uncertainty in his voice. "If I had asked it
of them, they would have stayed." He paused. "But if I could
have, I would have stayed without them."
"You would have died," Ranma said bluntly.
Herb shrugged. "Every man dies in time."
"True enough," Ranma said. "But it doesn't mean we gotta
seek it out, does it?"
To his surprise, Herb laughed. "True enough."
Ranma cocked his head to one side. "You okay, Herb? You're
actin' kinda weird."
The prince smiled, and brushed a few dishevelled strands of
pearly hair away from his eyes. "I am well. Better than I have
been in some time."
"Your temper's sure better than before," Ranma commented.
Herb's face darkened, and he stared at the table, his fists
clenched at his sides. He said nothing.
"Hey, sorry," Ranma quickly said. "Didn't mean--"
"It is alright," Herb said slowly. "While I cannot claim
absolvement from all my actions, I have been having... certain
difficulties for the past few months, since my accident at
Jusenkyou. Only recently did I begin to understand why."
Ranma squinted, confused. "What do you mean?"
"The dragon bloodline of the Musk royalty carries a curse,"
Herb explained. "It begins as soon as the male of the bloodline
sees a woman after a certain age. The roots of the separation of
the young men from their mothers in our people is in that curse.
The mind of the World-Hater reaches out into us, from beyond his
prison, and shapes us to his will. Over time, it grows worse and
worse, until we are nothing but tools of his evil."
He sighed. For a moment, he looked very tired, much older
than he actually was. "It was not always so. Until the breaking
of the Dragon Tribe, there was no such curse upon my line.
Ganziao and Fukwan changed that."
"Huh?"
"Ganzaio began the practice of transforming animals into
human women at Jusenkyou and using them for... his harem, I
suppose. Over time, he extended the privilege of doing so to
the rest of his men. It became a sort of competition; what
exotic animals would produce the most beautiful wives, what
strengths the children would inherit from their lineage..."
Herb reached up and rubbed his temples with one hand.
"Ganzaio's original and first wife was Fukwan. She was also
his sister."
Ranma blinked. "That's..."
"There was a great concern with keeping the bloodline of the
dragon pure in those days," Herb muttered. "Sibling marriages
were common. Fukwan was a powerful sorceress, and surrounded
herself with a circle of other women, all of them mighty in the
arts of magic. The human women of the Musk grew jealous of their
husband's animal wives, but they could do nothing to change it.
"Fukwan used that jealousy, because her heart was dark, and
secretly, she plotted to destroy the male line of the Musk and
rule supreme. With the aid of some members her circle who shared
her dream, she tore a hole in the protection of the power that
ruled Jusenkyou, and let in an army of savage barbarians who had
been hiding beyond the fringe. They swept down through the land,
killing all that they encountered. In the end, it was only the
surprise aid of the Joketsuzoku that defeated the army and
Fukwan's traitorous circle. Fukwan and the leader of the army
fled from the carnage, and were not seen again."
Ranma nodded slowly. "But why the curse?"
The door opened, breaking the conversation, and admitted
Kima and Wiyeed. The two of them briskly swept in together, side
by side, each with their own sort of regal grace. Neither looked
happy, though on Kima's face there was a mixture of disbelief as
well.
Without a word, the two of them came and sat down at the
table, Kima beside him, Wiyeed beside her brother. Ranma glanced
over at Kima, who presented him with an unreadable mask, and then
turned his head away, stifling a sigh.
"We need to know all that has happened to the two of you
since you arrived at Jusenkyou," Wiyeed said. "It is essential
to our understanding of the situation."
"Everything?" Ranma muttered, rubbing his hands together.
Wiyeed nodded. Her eyes, pale crimson and piercing, seemed
to bore into his. "We must know."
Ranma spent the next hour or so telling that story; as it
turned out, they had to be told everything from the beginning to
understand what had happened after. Kima filled in the bits he
couldn't in a monotone voice.
Wiyeed asked occasional questions, sometimes about details
that Ranma considered negligible. Herb simply listened in
silence, though when Kima told in flat tones and stark detail of
her crippling by Helubor, Ranma thought he might have seen the
Musk prince wince slightly.
When he was finished, Ranma took a long sip of water for his
dry throat, and studied Wiyeed intently. "Well?"
"Passages of our books relating to the time after the fall
of the Phoenix are fragmented and sketchy," she said, pushing a
loose strand of white hair back over one ear so that it spilled
down her back with the rest. "But the signs are there. 'The
dragon rules in the nest of the phoenix now, and the serpent
follows in the wolf's shadow, and the lady of darkness in his.'"
Ranma rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed. "I
understand the wolf. But what about the serpent? The lady of
darkness?"
Wiyeed closed her eyes. "I don't know. But I am afraid.
The World-Hater said that one of his servants walked among us
now. He called him the one gloried with his blood."
"I thought the power of the dragon under Jusendo was
supposed to keep such things out," Kima commented. She was
sharpening her sword, pulling it across a whetstone with a soft,
repetitive scrape. "And yet the hound entered. Helubor and Xande
served the Dark. And you say there is another now?"
"The power of She Who Must Not Wake is not without limits,"
Wiyeed answered. "Some entities of a certain nature may enter
without being detected. Any who are born within the confines are
not checked either. And with a great expenditure of power,
holes may be torn in the protection for a short time."
Kima nodded. She put down her sword on the table and
tapped her fingers together. "I must get a message to Mount
Phoenix. The king must be told."
"Cologne too," Ranma added.
Kima gave him a cursory glance. "Yes, I suppose she should
know as well."
"We could find a way, I suppose..." Wiyeed began.
"Wouldn't it be easier if you people had phones?" Ranma
asked. The two women shot vaguely hostile glares at him, and
went back to talking uninterrupted.
"You're all sorceresses, aren't you?" Kima asked. "Don't
you have some kind of magic you could use?"
"There's no reason to waste power like that," Wiyeed said,
shaking her head.
"You said yourself we don't have much time," Kima pointed
out. "Is it not important that we keep communication with our
allies?"
Wiyeed slowly nodded. "I'm not sure--" She stopped
abruptly in mid-sentence, and Ranma saw a tremble pass through
her body. She went rigid, and a distance entered into her eyes,
as if she had gone somewhere very, very far away.
"Wiyeed?" he inquired nervously, leaning forward across the
table.
Herb put his hand on her shoulder. "Sister?"
Very suddenly, another tremble went through her, and she
seemed to come back into focus. She stared intently into Ranma's
eyes, so intently that he began to feel uncomfortable.
"The Lady wishes to see you now," she stated. There was an
almost palpable aura of command in her voice. It could not be
denied. As she rose to her feet, Ranma realized he was rising
with her. His body did not feel his own; fire leaped merrily in
the back of his head. The singing and the splash of water were
loud as thunder, drowning out all sound.
Wiyeed looked to Kima and Herb. "Wait here. We will
return." The voice she spoke in was filled with power, with
control. Kima and Herb slowly nodded in unison.
The last thing Ranma saw as he walked out through the door
behind Wiyeed was Kima turning to regard Herb with a vague
hostility in her eyes. "So where are those two savages who were
with you before, prince?"
**********
Mint and Lime had died and gone to heaven. Or something
comparable. They had woken up lying on their backs, surrounded
by about a half-dozen young women, all of them quite attractive.
It would have been a bit better if they could move, but for some
reason, they couldn't.
"The spells are holding nicely," one the girls said
conversationally to another, her tawny hair spilled out from
beneath a dark hood.
"The big one is strong," the second girl replied. Her hood
was down, and dark grey eyes studied Lime with a large amount of
interest. "It's hard to hold him still."
"So slap a mental lock on him," a tall, slender girl said
shortly. "Put him to sleep again."
"I don't want to," the second girl said with a faint blush.
"I like looking at his eyes."
"They are rather nice to look at," the third girl admitted.
A fourth girl, the youngest, snorted. "They're boring," she
said in a slightly whiny voice. "Men aren't nearly as exciting
as the older sisters all say."
"Well, they can't move," a fifth girl said, absently running
her fingers through her short black hair. "Most things aren't
very exciting when they're paralysed."
The sixth shrugged, the lush body underneath her dark dress
moving with the motion in ways that Mint and Lime found
distinctly interesting. "So take it off."
"Wiyeed said not to," the youngest girl said. "We're
supposed to do what she says now."
"I heard from one of the older sisters that she had one of
the men put in her bedroom," the fifth said.
"Her brother is here too," the first girl informed the
others. "I've heard he's very handsome."
"Wiyeed has a brother?" the second asked.
The first nodded. "Very handsome," she assured.
"I'm taking the paralysis off the little one," the sixth
girl said. She waved a hand at Mint, who was surprised to find
himself suddenly able to move. "Hello there. I'm Xiandan. Who
are you?"
Mint sat up and looked around, his eyes wide. "I'm Mint,"
he squeaked. "You're girls, right?"
"Of course we are," the youngest girl said, glaring at him
suspiciously over a cutely upturned nose. "Men are very stupid
creatures, aren't they?"
"Wow!" Mint said. "Girls! Can me and Lime touch your
breasts?"
"Knock him out again, Xiandan," the third girl said. "He
obviously has no idea how to behave like a civilized person."
Xiandan waved her hand again. Mint's eyes closed, and he
fell quite contentedly asleep. "Oh well," she said with a bit of
disappointment. "The big one is cuter anyway."
"Men are so boring," the youngest girl declared again.
**********
Herb looked back at Kima for a moment. "Wiyeed said they're
being taken care of. Why do you ask?"
"I wanted to know," she replied. It would be her luck to
get stuck alone with the Musk prince, she reflected sourly. She
had met Herb and taken an instant dislike to him; what he'd said
to her when they'd been trapped by the Ravager had only increased
that feeling. It had hurt her, and when you were hurt, you
either cried or got angry.
However, she had not spent ten years as seneschal without
learning diplomacy. Animosity aside, Herb and his people, along
with his sister, could make powerful allies. They needed allies
now. Ranma had made it easier, but even after all this time, she
was still unsure if his interests were always for the best of her
people.
"So," she said conversationally, "how did you come to know
Ranma Saotome?"
**********
Wiyeed glanced over to Ranma as they walked down the long
flight of steps. "How did you meet her?"
Ranma blinked. "Huh?"
"Kima."
He smiled as he walked beside her. "Haven't I told enough
long stories tonight?"
Her eyes prompted him silently. He sighed and began.
**********
"He jumped in after you?"
Herb nodded. "I did not believe it myself at first. That
is why I owe him my life debt. There are few I can think of who
would do such a thing for a foe."
Kima smiled slightly. "He would."
Herb nodded again. "He is... different from when I first
met him. Hearing what has happened, I can understand why."
"He was not raised a warrior in the way you or I was," Kima
said. "He was not ready to kill when he did."
"You must always be ready to kill," Herb said slowly. "A
foe you leave alive may strike you down later."
**********
"I killed Saffron," Ranma said.
"Killed?"
He nodded. "I... guess I probably realized it at the time.
He came back to life. But I still killed him. Maybe that's
where all this began, when I first started being willing to go
that far. Maybe a part of me likes it."
Wiyeed shook her head. "I don't think so. You saved my
brother's life. I sense in you a great respect for the sanctity
of it. Such respect is a core of the Lady's teachings."
"What power does she have?" Ranma asked. "The dragon under
Ryugenzawa was the power of life, and the one under Jusendo was
change, transition..." He paused. "Then she is..."
Wiyeed nodded. "Everything comes in time, Ranma. The Lady
is the great gatherer, the last river. Her love is so great that
it enfolds all things in time. Death must occur. Once you
realize a thing is inevitable, it removes some of the terror of
it. Do not mistake dominion over something for the enjoyment of
that dominion."
Ranma looked at his hands and was silent for a long time.
The stairs wound deeper into the depths of the mountain; he heard
singing, and the flowing of water. "Every life I have taken is
like a stain upon me. Every death I cause diminishes me."
**********
Kima raised one eyebrow. "And how many have you killed to
learn this valuable lesson?"
Herb was silent for a moment. "None yet. But I have never
been unwilling." He looked up over his steepled hands at her
across the table. "And you?"
"One," Kima said. "Perhaps one day, I will meet another man
who deserves death as much as Helubor did. I pray that I do
not."
"You must always be ready to kill," Herb said.
"Isn't it also as important to be ready not to?"
Herb was silent again for a time. Finally, he nodded. "A
foe, in time, may become a friend."
"Yes," Kima said reflectively, "they may."
**********
"My brother and her. You have a talent for making allies of
enemies."
Ranma laughed. "You don't know the half of it. Ukyou,
Ryoga, Shampoo, Mousse... maybe Tarou, even." He paused.
"Funny, isn't it?" he mused, more to himself than to her.
They turned a corner of the winding stairs and stopped.
There was a doorway. Plain, undecorated iron, set flush into the
wall. Ranma could not even begin to guess at how deep they were,
how far beneath the great rising weight of Chenmo Shan - called
Silence, but no silence still, for still the singing and the flow
of water over rock - they had come.
"The Lady's place lies beyond here," Wiyeed said. "From
this point on, you shall go alone."
"Why?"
Wiyeed smiled, and reached up to gently brush her fingers
against his face, a lingering gesture. "Everyone goes before the
Lady alone."
**********
Kima stared at Herb. Herb stared back. They had, it
seemed, run out of things to say. Their only uniting factor was
the mark that Ranma had left upon their lives. Discussion of
him, of how they had met him, was finished.
Kima rose up from the table. She inclined her head once.
"I am going to try to send a message to my king."
Herb raised his head questioningly. "How?"
"We of the Phoenix have our ways."
She walked out onto the balcony, brushing one limp wing for
a brief moment against one heavy curtain. Every time it seemed
she came closest to forgetting, she was not allowed. Everywhere,
she saw the traces of that which had vanished, the fragments of
the lost. Behind her, Herb was silent as she left the room.
Out on the balcony, she folded her arms and shivered
slightly. She wore the ceremonial robes of the seneschal of
Phoenix Mountain, but even those heavy garments did not offer
complete proof against the sudden chill wind that rolled up the
mountainside and across the balcony, carrying on it the faint,
whispered tinge of water.
After a moment spent staring up at the sky, she pursed her
lips and sounded a long, high-pitched whistle that rose into the
darkness with the sound of water flowing, and the faint,
almost-audible singing.
No answer came, and so again she whistled. Waited.
This time, there came the sound of wings, from high above.
A shape sailed down within the darkness, and landed to balance
perfectly on the railing of the balcony. Not the dove she had
expected, but he would do better. An unexpected arrival.
Serendipity, perhaps, or could it be that the message might
summon the messenger?
"Hello, Shiso," she said. She stroked the great raven's
head affectionately. "Is there anything that you don't get
involved in somehow?"
The bird shrugged, and laughed croakingly. "I am busy these
days indeed."
"I have a message for Samofere," she said.
Shiso laughed again. "Of course you do. I have messages
for you, and for Prince Herb." He raised one wing and stuck his
head under as if to preen his feathers, but his beak emerged a
moment later holding two rolled and tied scrolls of paper. "Not
the time to tell you myself. These will explain. And what
tidings do you have?"
She told him quickly of their meeting of Herb and Wiyeed,
the Ravager's trap, and the probable presence of another servant
of the Dark within the area of Jusenkyou; the one who the Ravager
had called gloried with his blood. At that last, she saw the
bird start slightly, or perhaps it was only the blowing of the
wind across his feathers.
"Fly swift, friend," she said at the end. Shiso nodded and
launched wordlessly into the air with a single beat of his wings.
He seemed to flow into the darkness almost instantly, become one
with it and vanish.
She turned to go back inside, then paused and carefully
tucked the scroll with Herb's name on it into a pocket of her
robe. She carefully untied the scroll addressed to her, and read
the short note in Samofere's neat, precise hand.
She read it again, then slowly closed her eyes and bowed her
head. All in vain, perhaps, all that she and Cologne had done to
conceal their purposes with Ranma at the start. He was not going
to be happy when she told him. She put her scroll away, took out
Herb's, and walked back into the room to hand it to him without a
word.
"Who were you talking to out there?" he asked as he took it.
"The messenger. He brought this for you."
He nodded, accepting the odd situation with a certain degree
of royal poise. His reaction, upon reading the scroll, was
almost exactly what hers had been. He bowed his head, closed his
eyes, and let out a long, slow breath.
"I must speak to my sister," he said, rising up from the
table. "This news concerns both of us very much."
Kima shook her head. "You don't know your way around this
place. You'll just get lost. It's huge. It... reminds me of
home. Not surprising, really."
"What do you mean?"
She looked at him speculatively. "Your sister told me the
history of this place after she woke me. You don't know it?"
He shook his head silently, half-turned away from her. The
scroll was held tightly in one clenched fist at his side.
"This mountain was home to people of my race in the time
before the Ravager's coming," she said. "My people were the
original servants of the one she calls the Lady. After the
Ravager destroyed Wurdsenlin, they were the first to endure his
fury."
"What happened?"
For a moment, she could not answer. She had not wanted to
believe it when Wiyeed had first told her. "He asked for their
allegiance. The leader who ruled here in the name of the two
kings of the Phoenix Tribe had long been one of the Ravager's
followers, and he had brought many of those who lived here to the
worship of the Ravager's god. Those who would not swear their
allegiance to the Ravager were slaughtered by their own people."
She took a deep breath. "When Shouzin the Traitor led his
followers out of Chenmo Shan to join with the armies of the
Ravager, they had been changed. The Lady had cursed them, driven
them from the mountain and made it a place where death would find
any who dared attempt to enter it. For over two thousand years,
it lay abandoned, until the founders of the Daughters of the
Night were drawn here by the Lady's power."
Herb nodded slowly. "I knew... very little of this. The
histories of all our peoples are intertwined, it seems."
"They are," Kima agreed. "I think that it has begun again
to be so."
Herb nodded again. He turned back to face her. The
knuckles of his hand gripping the scroll were white. "It has.
Have you ever heard of the belief that history moves in cycles?"
"I have."
"Perhaps we are coming to the end of one such cycle," the
prince said slowly. "The fall of Wurdsenlin marked the end of
the golden age of our peoples. And now the darkness rises
again."
He smiled. There was no humour in it. "Perhaps we have
come to the end now, Kima. What are we, truly, you and I?
Fragments of fallen races whose time is past. The world beyond
the confines of our homes is alien to us. Do we even have a
place in it worth fighting for anymore?"
She stared at him in silence. How many times had she had
those same thoughts, she wondered. Dying peoples, slowly fading
away. Would anyone remember the Phoenix Tribe in a hundred
years?
"If our home is not worth fighting for, then what is?" she
asked finally. "Will we lie down and die in silence?"
Herb shook his head, his long hair flowing with the motion.
"I have never considered doing that. My people... now that I
have seen Wurdsenlin, seen what we were, I see how far we have
fallen. How far we fell before, when the Childkiller ruled."
The name made her stiffen slightly. "I apologize for
calling you that when we first met. It was not appropriate."
Herb gazed at her, appraised her with a glance. "No apology
is needed. I beg forgiveness for what I said to you earlier,
about..."
"It is alright," she said, cutting him off. "It was only
the truth. It hurt because I still do not want to believe it
entirely myself."
"Please believe that I did not say it out of only cruelty,"
Herb said. "I truly hoped that he would release you and my
sister and Saotome if I and my men stayed."
"I believe you," she answered. She turned away from him,
not wanting him to see whatever pain she might be showing on her
face. "It does not make the hurt any less."
"No," Herb said after a silence. "I do not suppose it
would."
She glanced back to him. "You are forgiven for it. I know
that the Musk have very little experience in how to properly
address women."
Herb looked almost angry for a moment, and then caught the
glint of humour in her eyes. He laughed then. "I am learning
quite rapidly, it seems."
The feeling in the room was comfortable now, companionable,
without any of the underlying hostility that had lain between the
two of them before. Kima moved back to the table and sat down,
poured herself water from the pitcher. Herb sat down across from
her. Neither of them had asked the other about the contents of
the messages; they were both valuers of their own privacy, and
thus had a respect for that of others when it suited them.
"You seem to know much of the history of my people," Herb
said after a moment.
"The memory of Phoenix Mountain is long," she answered.
"You know of Ganziao, at least," Herb said. "What of
Jinlung?"
She shook her head. "I know stories used to frighten
children, mostly. The Childkiller; Ganziao Woman-Slayer."
"Jinlung was the one who overthrew Ganziao and established
the roots of the Musk Dynasty as it is today," Herb explained.
"Ganziao reigned for three hundred years; the blood was purer in
those days, and more powerful. He had only a dozen sons in that
time, but he raised them to be as he was. Each was sent out upon
his eighteenth birthday on a quest to... prove himself a man.
The proof was in bringing back a human woman alive, and...
defiling her before their father."
Kima felt sick. She stared at Herb in shock. "That's
monstrous."
Herb nodded. "Yes. Monstrous does not even begin to
describe Ganziao. It was... a very dark time. The Musk
dominated the area of Jusenkyou. He left the Joketsuzoku alone
for the most part; even he was not mad enough to oppose their
magics, and he had seen what they were capable of in the battle
against Fukwan. But all other villages were in terror of him and
his men.
"Jinlung was his youngest son, and he was raised as all the
men of the Musk were in those days. Taken from his animal mother
as soon as he was weaned. Taught that women were only animals to
serve men. And when he was eighteen, he was sent out upon his
quest."
He smiled and stared at the scroll clenched in his fist,
lying on the table. "It was written that the woman he first saw
was so fair that the stars might fall down from heaven at the
sight of her. Somehow, in the seeing of her, he saw all the
monstrous wrongness of his father and of what the Musk had
become. He began a rebellion. His army was unstoppable. One by
one, he slew his own brothers as they tried to oppose him. He
came at last to his father. Ganziao was ancient and powerful,
but Jinlung was something else altogether. Their battle was said
to have shaken the very heavens, and at the end Ganziao lay dead.
After three hundred years of terror, the Musk began to claw their
way out of the darkness again.
"The curse of the bloodline still remained, though, which
was why the boys were always separated from their mothers. It
was to keep the males of the bloodline safe from the curse until
such time as they would be old enough to control it."
Kima looked at him intently. "And you are now?"
Herb shook his head. "Not... truly. I think I am now. I
was not before. I had an... accident."
"Accident?"
He looked, of all things, embarrassed. "There was talk of
arranging a marriage. It wouldn't have happened, of course; my
father only thought I had grown old enough to be introduced to a
woman. There are certain conditions the first meeting is done
under, to make the onset of the curse slow and weak, but..."
"What happened?"
"I snuck out with Mint and Lime and went to Jusenkyou," Herb
muttered darkly. "I already told you the rest. Needless to say,
my first sighting of a woman was not... helpful to my control
over the curse of the bloodline."
"No doubt," Kima said flatly.
Herb stood up again and turned to face the doorway. "My
sister is taking her time." He seemed to desire no more
conversation. Kima gave a mental shrug and walked back out onto
the balcony to stare out at the vast sky. There was an ache in
her heart still, and a phantom stirring of the maimed muscles of
her crippled wings. The sky - the limitless, beautiful,
unreachable night sky - seemed to mock her with the bright eyes
of its stars.
**********
Beyond the iron doorway, Ranma walked a slow and measured
tread down a sloping corridor. The stone was worn smooth by the
long passage of many feet. Light came from the same glass globes
that rested in every wall of Chenmo Shan.
Down and down he went, until the sight of the door he had
entered from was gone behind the rise of that gentle slope, until
he walked only in a place where he could see neither beginning or
end.
At last, he came - still with the sound of a voice singing
and of water over rock - to the end, to another doorway, a blank
and featureless square of stone without hinges.
He touched it, and it swung open silently. A rush of cool
air came up past him and whispered down the corridor, and though
the globes of light held not flame, they flickered all the same
in its passage.
Beyond was darkness, a blank expanse lit barely by the light
from the adjoining corridor. Ranma saw rough stone floor before
him, perhaps at the edge a glitter as of water.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped through. Silently, the
door closed behind him, light fading to a thin slit, and then
vanishing altogether. He felt no fear. He stood in the
darkness, with the sound of his own breathing, and the gentle
trickle of water over rock, and faint, very faint, the sound of a
voice lifted in song pure and sweet.
This darkness, though absolute, was not like the darkness of
the place the Ravager had ruled between the waters. It was
welcoming, soft even, an embrace. An utter peace fell over him,
and he stood in the darkness. Tension flowed from him; a
stillness like a placid lake came down upon his soul.
"Lady, I am come," he said at last.
And then the light came. A single thin silvery beam from
somewhere high above, as if moonlight had distilled itself and
come rushing down through all the stones of the mountain to reach
the place.
It struck the surface of the small lake that, and the light
refracted as if from a prism, casting itself out in spears that
struck the seams of white crystal that ran throughout the stone
walls and ceiling of the low cavern. It split again through
them, never diminishing, growing greater second by second, until
all of the cavern was filled with a soft glow.
Ranma saw the lake, small compared to the two that he had
seen before, beneath Ryugenzawa and Jusendo. A few moments
later, he would realize absolutely that size did not matter,
form neither, not at this level of power. Only that, in the end;
only the sheerness of the power.
The surface of the glittering, dark, impossibly deep lake
did not move a ripple as the dragon rose in stately silence.
The singing had stopped, and the sound of water flowing. He
could not hear himself breathe; he was not breathing, he
realized. Too much awe to be allowed breath; too much beauty.
Youngest and fairest and most terrible.
The Lady, the Dragon of Death, was purest black, but the
edges of her dark scales were rimmed with silver so pure it was
almost white. The form she had taken was tiny compared to that
of her sisters; perhaps thirty feet from head to tail. The
majesty was no less; more, perhaps, as if the smaller size only
emphasized the vast stored power behind those dark eyes, the
might that was manifested now in physical form, but never truly
contained.
*You understand,* the Lady said inside his head, as she
rose from the lake. Wingless, but there was an impression of
wings; the idea of the form, if not the realization. Grace, pure
beauty of flight; wings might appear if wings were desired, and
yet for now, they were not. *These forms are only our shadows.*
Nothing, not even the voice of the dragon under Ryugenzawa,
eldest sister of this one, could prepare him for the sound of
this. The speech of the Dragon of Life had been crescendo upon
crescendo, overwhelming, overpowering with the sheer beauty of
it. The voice of the Lady plucked a single string at the centre
of the heart and set the soul to sing in time.
"Oh, Lady," he said. He sunk to his knees, trembling, and
pressed his forehead to the rough stone of the floor as he bowed.
He was filled with light, with the shared grace of being in her
presence. "Lady, Lady, Lady."
*My child,* the Lady said. He felt her power, the love of
it, the eternal peace, stroke across him in a caress. He felt
his being laid achingly, painfully bare. *My beloved son.*
There was a ripple through the air, a soundless roar. The
touch of power became the touch of fingers on his head, raising
him up to look into eyes that stretched back to the beginning and
end of time. They were dark, so dark, and laden with the long
fall of years. Sorrow there, and a single white scar upon one
cheek. The hair was long and silky and dark; the Lady's scent
was that of lilies and time.
"Rise, beloved," the Lady said. He rose; she was tall as he
was, so beautiful it made the world seem to stand still. She
reached out and took one of his hands in one of hers. Her grip
was gentle, but irresistible as the pull of the tides.
The Lady led him out upon the surface of the lake; they
walked upon it as if upon a gentle plain of grass. Ranma stared
into the dark depths that lay at the bottom.
"What waters are these?"
The Lady walked him further towards the centre; each of
their footsteps left a tiny, spreading circle. "These are the
waters of forgetfulness, where all pain ends."
A wind ran in a circle around them, stirring the water in
waves. "Lord of Waters, have you come unto me to forget?"
There was the answer in him; his mouth burned with it, and
the words leapt and coursed along his tongue. Again, as there
had been before, there was a moment of decision; a moment of
precarious balance upon which the fate of much hung. He could
choose; a choice was being offered. Only in such ways as this
are we free, and not but slaves.
"No, Lady," he said. "I have come unto you to remember."
The Lady smiled. She cradled his head in her hands. With
gentle pressure, she made him look down, stare into the shadowy
waters. He heard the rustle of cloth as she bent forward, and
gently pressed her cold lips to his forehead.
**********
Kima stared at the stars for a long time, and watched the
slow track of the moon through the sky. In time, she heard the
door open in the room behind her, but she did not go back.
Companionship, the presence of others, was too alien a thing to
desire right now.
There was the speech of two voices, and then the sound of
footsteps. Wiyeed came out onto the balcony, head bowed and
shoulders slumped.
Kima glanced at her as the younger woman took a stance at
the railing of the balcony. "How is Ranma?"
Wiyeed shook her head. "I don't know. The Lady told me to
go back. I suppose she must have known of the message..."
For the first time, Kima saw that Wiyeed's face was wet with
tears. "What was in the message?"
"Our father is dead," Wiyeed answered in a whisper. "Herb
is the king of the Musk now."
A moment's hesitation, and Kima laid her hand upon Wiyeed's
shoulder. "I'm sorry."
"This changes everything," Wiyeed said, not even seeming to
notice the touch. "Everything. I should have known. I could
have saved him, if only I'd tried harder."
For a moment, Kima felt a kinship with Wiyeed so deep and so
painful that she could hardly bear it. She could not speak, only
stand silent beside the other woman, listening to the faint
singing that came down from the highest point of the mountain,
and the waterfalls splashing down the sides.
"You always feel that way at first," she said finally, the
old, familiar grief rising at the unwanted memories that were
coming back. "But you only know what you could have done
differently because you weren't able to do it when it counted."
Wiyeed turned her head slightly and their eyes met, pale
blue and a shimmering red. Then, slowly, she nodded. For a
brief moment, she rested her hand with Kima's where it lay upon
her shoulder.
Taking it away, she wiped at her eyes. "Herb and I must
talk alone. Please make yourself comfortable here. We will
return as soon as we are able."
Kima nodded. Wiyeed smiled weakly and slipped away, letting
the comforting hand fall from her shoulder. In the room behind
the balcony, there was the sound of hushed conversation,
footsteps, a door opening and closing. Then silence but for
singing, and the water.
Kima followed the descent of one waterfall, the long
splashing stream down the rugged slopes of Chenmo Shan, until it
passed out of sight beneath the shelf of a rocky cliff.
Her father had looked much like her, or better to say that
she had looked like him. He had smiled often, but she could not
recall ever hearing him laugh.
There had been the usual procedures when she was young; the
daughter of the most powerful family in Mount Phoenix had certain
roles to fulfil. She had taken to the lessons well enough, the
old histories and learning of her people. But nothing else; she
could not sew, or cook, or perform any of the other proper duties
of a lady of the Phoenix Tribe. So in the end, perhaps there had
been nothing for her father to do but train her as a warrior,
against all expectations or traditions. Perhaps he had hoped the
hardship of it would force her back to more appropriate pursuits.
It hadn't. She had loved it.
She had been strong; not some weak noblewoman, a pawn to be
married in the interplay between the noble families. And now it
came to this; crippled, staring out at the sky that was denied to
her. And remembering; memory no comfort, though, only grief in
the end.
"Forgive me, father," she said, bowing her head and leaning
forward with her hands on the railing. "I do not think this is
what you would have wanted me to become."
The crippling of the wings was the punishment for treason
against the king. That had been the excuse for it, but it had
been wrong. Had she not tried to the end to protect Saffron, to
serve his interests? And Helubor and Xande had been the
traitors, not her. What answer, then, for why?
Only the singing, and the sound of water over rock.
The records of those punished stretched back over two
thousand years. None in the last seven centuries before her.
But accidents happened, and wounds in battle, and disease that
robbed the wings of their strength. There was a tradition, of
course; go to the highest spire of the mountain, and take a last
flight, crippled wings or none. There was no shame in that; a
sort of honour, even.
She leaned forward, over the edge of the balcony, keeping a
firm grip on the railings. The breeze played across her face,
and she remembered flight, the freedom of it.
*I was wounded and you healed me, I was broken and you made
me whole, I wept and you comforted me.*
Further forward, and she stared down the dark slopes of the
mountain. Ever so slightly, her grip loosened. A small sigh
escaped her lips.
*Oh Lady, Lady, Lady, weary was I and you gave me rest. You
came to me when I was afraid, and before your light my fear was
nothing.*
Another few inches forward. So easy it would be. Simply a
letting go now, an inaction rather than an action. A long fall,
but nothing to break it at the end this time, no wings to spread,
no flight.
*Gather me in your time and hold me safe, bright one,
passage from river to sea, Lady, Lady, Lady of silences...*
She breathed in. Air and water, the gentle scent of lilies.
Then she carefully straightened and stepped back from the
railing, and dropped her shaking hands to her sides. The words
of the singing faded away into the air, again so quiet as to be
almost inaudible.
**********
Ranma opened his eyes. He stretched out legs that had been
curled to his chest, unwrapped his arms from around himself. He
was swimming in the sea of stars, the vast galactic blackness
marred with endless points of light.
A voice began speaking. Wiyeed's, yet not Wiyeed's; as if
something spoke using her voice. "In the beginning, the world
was nothing."
The stars began to spin around him, as if he were the centre
of a whirlwind. Faster and faster they spun, in a glittering
dance. "There was no heat."
So fast they began to blur together the stars spun, tighter
and tighter, closer and closer, until it seemed he might reach
out and pluck them from the sky.
"Nor light."
Faster.
"Nor life."
Faster.
"There was nothing."
No stars now. Only darkness. An eternity of black all
around him.
"From above the world, the Dragon King of the Heavens looked
down from his throne of clouds upon the nothing, and was
displeased. He summoned his three daughters and sent them down
upon the world."
A nova burned in the centre of his heart, and then he felt,
for a moment, the absolute stillness of everything, a total
cessation of all movement, everywhere.
"The first daughter, called She Who Makes, brought forth
that first substance from which all things came."
And then there was light. A brief spark, soon consumed by
the darkness. But light; glorious, wondrous, beautiful light.
"The second daughter, called She Who Mends, shaped that
substance the first daughter had brought forth into earth and
water and air and fire, and the plants that grow, and the
creatures that live."
Another light, a single spark that burned but grew no
greater. The darkness pressed hungrily around it.
"The third daughter, called She Who Breaks, measured out the
span of time that all things that the second daughter had shaped
would exist, before they returned from whence they had come."
The light went out again.
And then a hundred others bloomed.
And went out.
And in the place of each came a hundred others.
And they went out too.
And in the place of each a hundred more.
Faster.
"And the Unmaker came among them then, to destroy what they
had created."
Faster.
"He set one foot in the ocean, and there were great waves."
Faster.
"He set his other foot upon the land, and there were
earthquakes."
Faster, until it seemed that space would be filled only with
light.
"And he raised his hands and pulled down the sun to burn the
earth, and the mountains fell, and the seas rose up upon the
land, and the people went mad, and made war upon each other."
Still the stars whirled around him, but they were going out,
one by one, and now, no new ones came to take their places.
"And the sisters cried out to their father, but their father
did not answer."
The motion of the stars stopped. They hung still all about
him. Another voice, familiar and unfamiliar, taken for use for a
moment. Shampoo; how long since he heard her speak? That memory
brought back others, and for a moment, even in this place, he was
alone and filled with grief.
"Great was his wrath, for the child loved his wives, but not
him, and he swore that they would not live."
Darkness gnawed at the stars, and Ranma heard them scream as
they died. Entire galaxies were consumed in the black fires, and
thousands of worlds fell to ash.
It was Shampoo's voice; the words were not Shampoo's. He
could not even be sure of the language.
"And he took up his sword and wounded the child, and blood
came forth to stain the earth. And the wrath of his wives was
great, and they turned upon him, and he fled."
Kima now. As always, the strange accent upon the speech,
the vague hint of birdsong. The stars were still going out,
still screaming as they died. The screams were everywhere.
"Upward burning the phoenix flew, her fire bright as the
sun, towards the terrible shape in the sky. And the King of
Ashes fled the fire."
The death of the stars had stopped. Wounded, those that
remained hung in the air. He heard a vast moaning, as if all of
creation was crying out in pain.
And now, the last, the Lady's voice. "Do you understand,
Lord of Waters?"
"No!" he called back desperately. "Why speak in riddles?
Why?"
"It is my nature," the Lady answered. "I can do no more."
And another voice began to speak into his ear and it said
his names. He saw them then, the men and women to who those
names belonged, each like a tiny fragment of the crystal that was
his soul, and each of them a tiny fragment made of other
fragments, and each fragment a fragment of fragments.
Some fragments were fragments of him, and he finally
understood, understood everything. Nothing ever truly died;
everything lived forever. The ocean held the water that became
the rain, and the rain fell upon the river, and the river flowed
to the ocean, and it all began again. A part of his soul had
lived before; a part of it would live after. The sheer,
beauteous perfection of it stunned him.
"Yes," the Lady said. "But what if someone sought to dam
the river?"
He closed his eyes. And opened them.
He was by the shore of the Lady's lake. The waters were
still, and the Lady nowhere in sight. The light was dimming.
His chest burned, as if scarred with fire. Trembling, he
undid the ties of his shirt, one by one. He saw the serpentine
head of the black dragon, gripping the tail of the green one in
her jaws near his waist, the rest of her body curling back around
his ribcage and out of sight upon his back.
The dragons glowed with their own inner light in the
darkness. He touched them, lightly, and felt a tingle spread
through his fingertips to the rest of his body.
Everything seemed sharper, all his senses. As he stood to
his feet, he was astonished by the ease of his movement, by how
smoothly and quickly his body responded. He felt like a blade
from which the rust had only now been scoured.
"What have I become?" he whispered softly. He heard the
water - felt it, the power of the flow beneath his feet - and it
seemed to call to him. Still trembling, he raised his hand. A
moment's expenditure of will, a spark of power, and it burst into
white fire.
He stared at it, at the dance of it, hypnotized, and then
concentrated. The flames turned blue, then red, then gold. He
drew the colours up from inside him, from the sourceless source,
the endless shifting dance of fire with ice. Crimson, silver, a
purple edged with flourishes of gold, a shifting blaze of bronze
and steel, a black so dark it hurt the eye to look at.
His fist clenched. The flames went out. Slowly, he smiled;
the power coursed through him like electricity, as if he were a
tree wreathed in flame. He could feel the water, and the ancient
shifting might of the earth beneath his feet, and the winds that
could gather for the hurricane, and the air that waited to be
consumed by fire. Power. Sweet, sweet, power.
It took him a few moments to come back to himself, and when
he did, he was sickened by his previous thoughts. But he could
not deny it, that the joy of the power had been there, the want
to exercise it, the uncaring need to use it.
You always wanted to be the best, some deep and hidden part
of him whispered. A man among men. You were that; now you are
something more.
He stared at his hands, and slowly shook his head. There
would be no more weeping anymore. He could not afford the luxury
of it.
"What have I become?"
No answer. What had he?
**********
They waited outside the iron door. Brother and sister,
mirrored images. Long silence between them; nothing to say.
Strangers, really.
After a time, the door opened, and Ranma Saotome came
through. He had changed in the short time. Nothing that could
be placed easily, but the air about him, the way he moved, was
subtly different. It was in the eyes most of all; they had been
a soft grey before. Darkened now, like storm clouds.
"It is finished," he said, and there was an impossible
weariness in him. Brother and sister stared at him. Their eyes,
crimson as if dyed with the noble blood of their lineage, studied
the aura of the one before them. Each of them felt something
akin to fear; there was nothing else to feel, in the face of what
they saw there.
Herb nodded and said nothing. He stepped by Ranma and
through the open door, closing it behind him as he went down the
long corridor towards the Lady's lake. As his father before him
had, as every king of the Musk Clan had done since the end of
Ganzaio's reign over a thousand years ago, he went to go before
the Lady.
Wiyeed waited until her brother had left, and then carefully
took Ranma's head in her hands, and tilted his face down so that
she might kiss his brow. She was the Lady's chosen, and what she
saw in Ranma Saotome now that he had come forth from his audience
with the Lady grieved her terribly.
"Come now," she said gently, releasing him. She spoke to
him as the Highest One now, however else she might feel about
him. "You may rest, Lord of Waters."
She led him up through the near-abandoned hallways of Chenmo
Shan. Outside the door to the room they had met in, he stopped.
She turned. "Rest. You are weary."
Ranma shook his head. "No. I can't rest yet."
"Sleep," she said quietly, and stretched out a hand to touch
him. She knew what was best for him right now.
He caught her wrist, and lightly traced her forehead with
the fingers of another hand. "Sleep," he said gently. With
an expression of great surprise, Wiyeed slumped into his arms.
"Sorry," he said, carefully laying her down outside the
door. "But I have to make right what I can."
**********
"Hey."
Kima started and looked back. She hadn't even heard the
door open. Ranma stepped out from between the curtains onto the
balcony, his arms held loosely at his sides. "Hello."
He nodded and came to stand next to her at the railing,
resting his forearms on it. "Kima?"
She shifted her hands on the railing and moved a step away
from him. "What?"
"We've been through a lot since this started, haven't we?"
She gave him a flat stare. "Masterfully understated."
He smiled, but there was an odd seriousness to his face.
"Yeah, I guess. I just wanted to say..." He trailed away into
silence, shaking his head.
Despite herself, her interest was peaked. "Say what?"
"I wanted to say thanks," he said at last, as if she had not
spoken at all. "I think there are times when I couldn't have
made it through without you and Cologne."
She was silent for a moment, staring at him. His eyes
seemed darker than she remembered. "There are times when I could
say the same for you."
Ranma laughed then, very softly. He looked up at the stars,
and then spoke. "When I was talking to Wiyeed, I realized
something for the first time that I probably should have figured
out a long time ago."
"And that would be?"
He turned his eyes to gaze at her. "Every friend I've ever
had started out as an enemy. Weird, isn't it?"
She felt transfixed by his stare. "I suppose it is
strange."
He smiled at her, then went back to looking at the stars.
"I'm sorry about what happened to your wings, Kima."
She winced. "You already said that a long time ago. I
don't need to hear it again."
"Do you miss flying?"
"Of course I do." A burst of anger swelled in her. "Did
you ever think I wouldn't?"
He shook his head. "Sorry. Stupid question, huh?"
"Yes," she whispered, staring down the slope of the
mountain. The breeze blew by her face, ruffling her bangs.
Again, it carried the faint singing, though she could not make
out the words. "Stupid."
"Kima?"
She looked up. "What?" she asked snappishly. She felt a
great desire to be alone again.
Wordless, Ranma stepped away from the railing and spread his
hands out to his sides. A pale fire limned them, and spread up
his arms until his entire body was covered in a thin sheen of
light.
There was a stirring in the air, a gathering of wind, and
motes of dust rose to dance around Ranma's feet. A subtle
shifting of his arms, and he rose a foot off the ground into the
air.
Kima stared. Her throat was suddenly dry.
"Herb did something like this when I first met him," Ranma
said quietly. "But he didn't seem to have enough control over
it. I thought about it, though, and it's easy. Come on." He
held out his hand.
Unable to speak, she reached out and took it. He pulled her
in closer, and looped his free arm about her waist. Almost
unconsciously, she crooked her arm around his neck, having to
stand on the tips of her toes to do so.
They rose into the air, a bit shakily at first, but with
growing grace and speed. Her legs dangled helplessly; frightened
and exhilarated at the same time, she pulled her hand from his
and clung to his waist, pressing against him.
He laughed. They dipped slightly, and moved off from
hanging over the balcony. A wind seemed to circle around them as
they moved; white fire coursed through the air. A drop of
hundreds of feet hung below them.
The wind shifted; they soared up into the air, and dived,
the air lifting her limp wings into a pantomime of flight for a
moment. She laughed then; she could not help herself. Glancing
to the side, she saw Ranma's face was alive with joy, his eyes
bright.
"This is wonderful," he said. Smiled.
"Yes," she murmured, a strange happiness spilling over in
her. She laid her head against his shoulder and subtly tightened
her grip on him. "Wonderful."
Ranma stiffened at first, seeming surprised, and then he
relaxed. His arm shifted slightly on her waist; he brought his
free hand up to rest it upon her upper back, at the joining of
her broken wings.
Kima closed her eyes and sighed. She breathed in the scent
of his skin, the tang of water. The wind ran through her hair,
fluttered the skirts of her robe about her legs.
Soon, too soon, her feet touched solid ground again. Ranma
let go of her almost instantly; she risked a moment of longer
contact, and then stepped back, staring into his eyes. He looked
back at her, something odd and hidden and almost vulnerable in
his gaze.
"Thank you," she said finally. She inclined her head once
to him, hesitated for a moment. "How do I do it?"
Looking up, she saw the sadness in his eyes. "You can't."
She nodded. Closed her eyes. "I didn't think I could. Why
not?"
"There's just not enough power in you," Ranma answered
quietly. "Herb, Wiyeed, I think they'd be able to do it.
Maybe Cologne. It's very draining."
She nodded again, fought back the slight itching urge of
tears. "It's alright."
There was a silence from Ranma for a moment. "No. I didn't
come out here to show you that, to... I don't even know what made
me do it. I should have told you right away..."
The tone of his voice, the words, brought back the message
she had almost forgotten. She cursed silently, wondering how it
could have slipped her mind, and pulled the scroll from her
pocket. "Here. You need to see this."
Ranma opened it and read it in silence. "Damn," he said at
the end, closing his eyes. "Damn, damn, damn." He shook his
head, and sighed deeply. "Shoulda expected it, though. I'm not
gonna worry about it now. I'm too far away to do anything."
He tucked the scroll away and turned his attention back to
her. "I think I can heal you."
A tide of bitter pain. "You already tried. It didn't
work."
Ranma shook his head. "No. I wasn't going about it right.
I was trying to do it in the same way I healed Cologne, and that
wasn't the way I should have. I... I'm starting to understand
more about the way these things work. Let me try again.
Please."
Slowly, she nodded. What harm could it really do; simply
another broken hope. If it would make him happy, then let him
try.
She turned her back to him, and, after a moment, felt his
strong hands touch lightly upon her back. Hesitantly, he traced
the scarred joining between one wing and her back.
She took a deep breath, and felt a tingling sensation where
his hands touched her skin. He probed for a moment longer, and
then drew his hands away.
"Helubor used Galm's knife, didn't he?"
Mutely, she nodded.
"Ahh," he said sagely. "That's it, then."
She could say nothing in return. Fighting back the urge to
tremble, she reached out and closed her hands around the railing
of the balcony, and waited for it to end.
**********
Ranma lifted the limp spread of one wing in his hand, and
again ran his fingers along the crippled joint between the wing
and her back. The flesh was pale and scarred.
The last time he had tried this, the darkness in that wound
had nearly swallowed him. He understood now; the blade had been
a part of the hound, and a part of the hound's power was in the
wound.
He sank in, focusing on the texture and heat of skin, and
falling in deeper, past the healed cuts of the wounding, to the
destroyed nerves and muscles.
The darkness was waiting. It seethed with hate and rage,
and howled and snapped at him as he came. No chains bound it
here; it stood like a guardian against the mending of this
crippling.
Ranma raised light against it like a torch, and drove it
whimpering back. On and on he came, burning the alien corruption
out, merciless and inexorable. The darkness tried feebly to
fight back, but it was no match for that which burned it.
Snarling, it fled.
Now there was the wounding only. A terrible crippling, and
in the wound was bound a deeper pain. Carefully, Ranma sought
the edges of it. This was not the unconscious healing he had
done to Cologne; that had been instinct. This was precise as
surgery, infinitely finer.
Some wounds healed with time. New skin grew over cuts,
toxins purged themselves from the system, even broken bones might
knit in time. Some didn't. So time was no help.
But the body, the body knew itself. The way it had been
when it was born, the shape that it would pass on to its
children. If time might flow backwards then, and make the torn
flesh remember the perfection of the earlier form, what then?
You know yourself, he whispered gently. Show me. Be
healed. He stroked lightly with his power. The answer came
back. After that, it was easy. As if he had been doing it
since he was born, he set the sparks of light singing through
the wound, and felt muscle stir and grow anew, severed tendon
knit together.
He left it doing that, and turned to the other wing. The
darkness was there too, and it howled and fled before his
blazing light. Exulting, he did as he had done before. And
stepped back, out from the sinking into flesh and blood and bone,
away from the healed pain.
Kima turned from the balcony and stared at him. A tremble
seemed to pass through her entire body. Subtly, almost
imperceptibly, her wings trembled in time. An expression of vast
disbelief showed on her face.
"You did it," she whispered numbly.
He grinned. "How do you feel?"
"Like I've been flying for days without rest," she answered
quietly. "My wings ache; I don't think I could fly if I needed
to. But I can feel them. I can feel them, Ranma."
She reached out and took one of his hands in hers. Bending
her head, she brought it to her lips. "Thank you," she said, and
lightly kissed it. He felt a drop of liquid splash against his
wrist; a tear. They were streaming down her face, falling on his
hand, on the floor of the balcony, on everything.
Embarrassed, he slowly pulled his hand away, and stared into
her eyes as she raised her head. "I gotta go wake up Wiyeed."
"What?"
He looked uncomfortably at the floor. "Long story."
Inexplicably, through the falling of her tears, Kima
laughed. It was infectious; after a moment, he laughed as well.
Their laughter rang out, and mingled with the singing that had
not ended in fourteen centuries, and with the sound of the water
flowing over rock, and the silent music of the stars that hung
above their heads; in its own way, as much a defiance of the
Dark as any blow they had yet struck. (
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