The Veiled Dragon

Thirteen

Tang saw the serpent dart beneath a ti plant and hopped across the stream after it. He stirred the spear-shaped leaves until the viper struck at his snake stick, then flipped the Y-shaped head around and pinned the creature’s neck to the ground. He kneeled beside his captive and grabbed it behind the head. This snake was the largest yet, so great in diameter that he could not close his hand around its slime-scaled throat. There would be plenty of venom.

The prince twined the serpent’s writhing body around the shaft of his stick and, picking his footing very carefully, carried the heavy thing across the stream to his workbench. Atop the flat rock lay two sacks of supple leather cut from the collars of a pair of boots. With sharpened sticks protruding from them at all angles, the bags looked like melon-sized cockleburs. They were stuffed with wads of silk ripped from the battle tunics of dead soldiers, whose voices Tang still heard screeching above the drone of the mosquitos.

“Be patient, my troops. Soon I intercede for you.” If Tang could find the strength to see his plan through, his ancestors would be so overjoyed that he would no longer need to hide his failure from them. “Soon I pray to Yen-Wang-Yeh; I testify to your bravery, and he renders honorable verdict.”

The spirits took no comfort in the prince’s promise. They continued to screech.

Tang sighed and set his snake stick aside. He took the sack by the long, unsharpened stake that served as a handle—it was not wise to touch the bladder with bare hands—and held it close to his captive’s face. The frightened viper struck instantly, sinking its fangs through the supple leather and into the wad of cloth inside. The prince shook the serpent to encourage the release of more venom, then repeated the process several more times. When he had milked the last of the creature’s toxins, he flung it down the hill and stooped over to inspect his handiwork. Both sacks were so full of poison that cloudy beads of venom were seeping back through the fang holes.

Tang carried the poison-filled bladders down to the swamp, where the cadavers of his dead soldiers lay scattered across the pond as thick as lily pads. Most of the corpses had been savagely mangled by alligators or bitten cleanly in two by the wyverns, but a few were blackened and bloated from dozens of snake bites, often to such an extent that runnels of thick black fluid spilled from splits in the skin. These had been molested by neither alligator nor wyvern, and it was the observation of this fact that had kindled again the prince’s hopes of redeeming himself.

After retrieving his dugout and making a careful search along the edge of the swamp, Tang had located two relatively whole bodies that were not bloated with snake poison. One man had managed to swim to dry land after being eviscerated, while the other had either drowned or died of fright—the prince had found him caught beneath a cypress root with no obvious wounds.

Tang stuffed one of his poison bladders into the abdomen of the eviscerated soldier, then used his dagger to create a place for the second ball in the other man’s stomach. He closed the wounds with small wooden pins and dressed the pair in the cleanest, least-tattered battle tunics he had been able to find. If the men’s spirits objected to having their bodies used as bait, the prince could not tell over the din of voices already assailing his ears. He loaded the cadavers into the dugout, leaning one man over the bow and propping the other in the stern. Into the bottom of the punt, he placed a halberd and some supplies he had gathered from his dead troops, including a rope, torches, oil, and a waterskin.

After peering through gray mosquito haze to make certain no alligators lurked nearby—most had retreated to their dens to gorge themselves on last night’s catch—Tang slipped into the bog scum. As the water rose above his waist, the stench of decaying plants and rotten fish grew immensely more powerful. He gagged and nearly emptied his stomach, then slapped a hand over his nose and forced himself to breathe through his mouth until he grew accustomed to the reek. He pushed the dugout toward Cypress’s cavern, moving so slowly that even he could not see the water rippling. A familiar, cold weakness crept over his limbs, and his heart began to pound so loudly it drowned out the wails of the dead soldiers. In response, they raised their voices until it seemed the entire swamp reverberated with their howls.

“Worthy ancestors, please to silence spirits,” the prince begged. “It is difficult to be brave with such din.”

If anything, the spirits wailed more loudly, yet not loudly enough to drown out the small, whispering voice that kept telling Tang he was a fool to face the wyverns alone. It was not the place of Shou princes to wade through swamps filled with the choking stench of death and rot, or to brave black waters infested with leeches and alligators.

The bottom vanished beneath Tang’s feet. He forced his legs and arms into service and swam toward the cave. The closer he came to the moss-draped maw, the weaker his limbs felt. He doubted he would have the strength to enter the grotto, but that was not required. All he had to do was push the dugout into view of the wyverns, and they would do the rest.

As the prince consoled himself with these thoughts, it occurred to him there was a weakness in his plan. How would he know when—or even if—the wyverns took his bait? The poison would be both painful and quick. Once the stakes punctured the lining of their stomachs, the great reptiles would thrash about and screech madly for a short time, but Tang would not hear them. The dead soldiers were wailing too loudly; the prince would not have heard it if Cypress himself roared in his ear.

Tang allowed the dugout to drift to a stop, then hung from its stern. He had two choices: go into the cave with the corpses, or make his report to Yen-Wang-Yeh so the soldiers would be silent.

Or sneak out of the swamp while Cypress was away, added the insidious voice inside his head.

“I do not go back!”

Feeling proud for avoiding the obvious choice of a coward, Tang took the second most cowardly course and swam the dugout toward the yawning cavern. It seemed entirely possible the wyverns would kill him, but that was preferable to disgracing his ancestors by admitting that he had turned out to be a fool.

The punt nosed in front of the cavern mouth. When the wyverns did not immediately come swooping out of the darkness, Tang took a deep breath, then slipped beneath the water and pushed the dugout around the corner. The din of his dead soldiers faded to a watery roar, and the cowardly voice in his head stopped urging him to flee. The prince continued to ease forward, hoping his feet did not break the surface when he kicked, struggling to keep his hand from slipping on the boat’s slimy bottom. His lungs were already burning for air, but he knew it was only the coward in him looking for an excuse to flee.

Tang continued to kick, praying he would feel the wyverns’ strike rock the dugout before his craven lips opened and sucked a mouthful of fetid water into his lungs. It occurred to him that the wyverns might be gorged already. But they had to be ravenous after last night’s burst of fighting, and the two lizards had not yet finished feeding when Cypress sent them inside to guard the lair. Unless the prince had misinterpreted last night’s events, they would be voracious enough to devour the punt as well as its contents.

So why hadn’t they attacked?

Tang’s yearning for air grew so overwhelming that he nearly opened his mouth. Instead, he blew his breath out through his nostrils and continued to swim.

At this point, he expected the coward inside to remind him that it was treason to risk the life of a Shou prince, to urge him to swim for the swamp. The whispering voice remained mercifully silent, perhaps because it knew Tang had come too far. The punt was his only camouflage. If he was not behind its sheltering bulk when he pushed his head above water, the wyverns would swoop down to bite him in two, just as they had bitten apart those bodies in the swamp outside.

A black fog gathered at the edges of Tang’s perceptions, and he realized he could no longer deny his lungs. He rolled onto his back and pushed his head up alongside the slimy hull. When his face broke the surface, he opened his mouth and quietly filled his chest with dank, moldy air.

The cavern ceiling hung thrice a man’s height above his head. It was a dark vault of broken stalactites and shadowy hollows, dimly illuminated by the swamp’s emerald light. Here and there were blocky holes where some huge chunk of stone had long ago fallen into the water, shaken loose by an earthquake, or perhaps some ancient outpouring of Cypress’s anger.

Tang allowed his gaze to follow the curve of the ceiling down to the wall, then farther down to a rock ledge looming above the water. Hanging above this stony bench were two pairs of huge orange eyes with slit pupils and gleaming, voracious gazes. The prince’s heart skipped a beat or several, and he stopped himself from crying out only by pulling his head beneath the water.

The wyverns struck the next instant, taking Tang’s bait so hard that they slammed the bottom of the dugout into his chest. The impact drove the air from his lungs, and he found himself choking on fetid brown swamp water. His head broke the surface of its own accord and violent coughs began to rack the prince’s body. He grabbed the side of the punt and tried to regain control of his convulsing chest.

A pair of severed legs splashed down on the other side of the dugout. Tang looked up and saw four reeling wings silhouetted against the cavern’s far wall. Still coughing, he grabbed for his halberd, nearly capsizing the punt as he reached inside. The wyverns turned toward him. Their orange eyes glowed bright as fire, and strings of flesh dangled between their needle-sharp teeth. In the dim light, the prince could barely make out a prickly leather ball lodged in the corner of one creature’s mouth. He could not see the second poison sack, but the other reptile kept whipping its narrow head from side to side and thrusting out its forked tongue, as though something were caught in its throat.

The wyverns swooped low over the water. Tang found the heft of his weapon and saw his attackers raise their tails to strike. He forgot about the halberd and pulled hard on the side of the dugout, flipping it over on top of him. The polearm’s shaft fell across his shoulder; then a pair of loud, sharp thuds cleaved the din of his dead soldiers’ voices. The bitter smell of wyvern poison filled the air. The prince grabbed the halberd and slipped beneath the surface.

A muffled crack reverberated through the water, followed quickly by a great gurgling sound as a large mass splashed into the pool. Tang kicked away from the spreading slick of wyvern poison—he did not want the stuff seeping into his scratches—and came up for air.

At the base of the stony ledge lay one of the wyverns, thrashing about in the water and hurling shards of splintered dugout in every direction. A puffy black bulge had formed halfway down its sinuous neck, where the snake venom was eating away the delicate tissues of the throat lining. As the ring of swollen flesh began to restrict the flow of blood and air, the creature’s nostrils flared, and its eyes bulged. It swung around and, when it tried to rip the obstruction from its own throat, came away with nothing but a mouthful of black mush. It flung the putrid flesh across the cavern, then suffered a wave of uncontrollable convulsions and collapsed into the water.

A long, mournful hiss sounded from atop the ledge, where the second wyvern lay above its mate. One side of the beast’s head had bloated into a shapeless mass of dark flesh. The reptile itself looked listless and sick, but there were no tremors or spasms to suggest the venom would ultimately prove fatal, and the venom ball was hanging precariously at the corner of its mouth.

If the wyvern was to die, Tang realized, he would have to kill it. He swam toward the back of the cavern, angling toward a large block of stone that rose out of the water and leaned against his foe’s rocky perch. The great reptile raised its neck, turning its head to track his progress. As the prince neared his goal, the wyvern lifted its wings as though to take flight, then abruptly let them fall and reluctantly gathered its legs beneath its bulk.

If he turned back now, the wyvern would be too weak to follow him, but Tang had no desire to flee. He wanted to rescue his mother, and to do that he had to slay this beast. He reached the boulder and clambered out of the water, then started up the slippery limestone. The wyvern peered over the top, then turned sideways and whipped its poison-tipped tail toward his chest.

Tang brought his halberd around, slapping the poison-dripping barb aside with the flat of the blade. In the same instant, he continued the motion, circling it over the top of the wyvern’s tail and bringing the head up on the inside. Had he been fighting a man with a lance or spear, the maneuver would have sent his foe’s weapon flying away. In this case, it twined his polearm into the powerful appendage. The prince clamped the shaft beneath his arms and held on tight.

The reptile pulled its tail back to strike again, jerking Tang up the boulder and swinging him across the stony ledge. He slammed into the cavern wall and nearly blacked out as the breath exploded from his body. The wyvern started to whip its tail back toward the boulder, nearly ripping the halberd from Tang’s grasp, then realized it was dragging something and stopped. The misshapen head swung around and fixed an angry orange eye on the prince, who began to wish he had not been so rash when he had had the chance to flee.

Tang leapt over the tail, thereby freeing his halberd, and brought the blade around in a quick arc. The sharp edge slashed through the scaly tendril and sent the tail’s poisonous barb skittering across the stones.

Even had he not felt the wyvern’s hot breath washing over his back, Tang would have known what was coming next. He instantly pulled back, pushing the halberd butt into the air behind him, and smoothly switched stances so that he was facing the opposite direction. He found the wyvern’s fang-filled jaws descending toward his head. The prince stepped forward to meet the attack, at the same time thrusting the butt of his weapon into the leathery ball lodged in the corner of the reptile’s gaping maw.

The poison sack came loose and rolled deep into the wyvern’s throat; then the beast’s jaws snapped shut and severed the halberd shaft a hairbreadth above the prince’s fingers. Tang started to shuffle backward, then saw a flash of motion in the corner of his eye and turned to dive off the stony bench. The leathery wing caught him squarely in the back, launching him with such force that he sailed across the cavern and slammed into the far wall. His body erupted in pain; then he plunged into the black water.

Tang floated for a long time, too sore to breathe even if he had not been lying facedown in a pool of fetid swamp water. He ached from the tips of his fingers to the ends of his toes, which was probably a good thing, since it meant the wyvern’s blow had not broken his back. He tried to take stock of other possible injuries, but everything hurt too much to tell if any particular bone was broken or out of joint. When the need to breathe finally grew sufficiently urgent, he tried to roll onto his back and discovered the water was only knee-deep. He gathered his legs beneath him and rose out of the water.

At first, Tang did not recognize the strange growling sound he heard and thought perhaps the wyvern was coming after him. Then he recognized it as his own voice, groaning in pain, and realized with a start that the voices of his dead soldiers had fallen silent. In the dim light, he could barely make out the figure of the great reptile across the cavern, lying on the ledge with its barbless tail and one leathery wing dangling motionless over the side. There was a large black bulge near the top of its scaly neck, and the amorphous mass that had once been its head was so swollen that the flesh had split open.

“Two wyverns!” the prince whispered. “Perhaps I am fool, but no longer am I coward!”

Even as he spoke them, Tang realized the words were not altogether true. There were many forms of cowardice, some more important than others, and he could not redeem himself through a single act of bravery. He turned toward the entrance of the cavern and bowed in deep respect.

“Listen, O Yen-Wang-Yeh, Great Judge and King of Eighteen Hells.” Tang spoke loudly and clearly, so that his ancestors might hear his words as well. “Listen and hear testimony of foolish Shou prince who squanders lives of General Fui D’hang and many dutiful soldiers …”

* * * **

In the amber dawn light, even Ruha could see that the cart tracks led up the hill straight to the gloomy ruins of what had once been a many-spired fortress of hanging bartizans and dark hoardings. Tombor had driven through a grimy stream at the edge of the small wood where Vaerana had stopped the column, and the wagon wheels had left a pair of dark lines in the center of the dusty road.

“I should have guessed,” Vaerana growled. “The Night Castle.”

“The Night Castle?” Ruha asked.

“We’ve chased cult assassins in there before,” Vaerana explained. “Whenever we do, the place fills with darkness. It’ll be a hard thing to find Yanseldara’s staff in that murk—especially if Cypress is there defending it.”

Ruha glanced toward the eastern horizon, where the shrines of Temple Hill were silhouetted against At’ar’s blazing golden orb. “The sun is rising; in a few minutes, my fire spells will be powerful enough to dispel even the thickest darkness.”

“That won’t do us any good, I’m afraid.” Pierstar Hallowhand rode up to join Ruha and Vaerana. Behind him followed one of his gray-cloaked trackers and a bedraggled, long-bearded man who looked as frightened of his mount as he did the company of Maces gathered on the road. “If the staff was there, it’s gone now.”

“How can you know that?” Vaerana demanded.

“Longnose found a shepherd grazing his herd south of here.” Pierstar motioned his scout to bring the bedraggled fellow forward, then nodded to the man. “Tell the Lady Constable what you saw last night.”

The fellow snatched his grimy cap from his head and began to wring it in his hands, then stared at the ground beneath Vaerana’s stirrups. “It was well past high night, ma’am,” he began. “I was waked by me dogs howling, an’ I heard a bell ringing, only it was real deep.”

The man paused, which prompted Vaerana’s gaze to snap toward Pierstar. “I don’t see what—”

“Let him finish,” Pierstar said. Then, to the man, he ordered, “Go on, and be quick about it. Vaerana Hawklyn’s not known for her patience.”

Looking more frightened than ever, the man blurted, “It was maybe an hour later. My dogs went mad, an’ I looked up and saw a dragon flying over. I thought I’d lost me herd an’ me life too, but it just flew by.” He pointed toward the Night Castle. “It landed in there. I’ll tell you, ma’am, I rolled me blanket quick and started the herd for these woods, but the dragon was back in the air before I made a hundred paces—an’ he was carryin’ something real careful-like in his claws.”

“What?” Vaerana demanded. “An oak staff with a big topaz pommel?”

It was Ruha who answered. “No. Cypress would not trust anyone else with that staff. It had to be the ylang blossoms.”

“I don’t know about your blossoms or your staff,” said the man. “All I saw was a real fat cleric holding a big wooden cask, an’ he looked about as scared as me.”

“Then we’ve lost the trail.” Vaerana did not curse or cry out; her shoulders simply slumped forward. “Even if we knew where the lair was, we can’t ride as fast as Cypress can fly.”

“We have lost the trail, but not the battle,” said Ruha. “Minister Hsieh is pressing the real oil for us at the Ginger Palace. Perhaps we should go and retrieve it; when Cypress returns home and discovers that he has been deceived, he will come to us.”

* * * **

Tang hurled the torch against the gray limestone, then sat upon a fallen stalactite to contemplate the back wall of the cavern. He had explored every nook, cranny and fissure without finding Cypress’s lair. Not a single passage large enough for a man, much less a dragon, led deeper into the mountain. The prince had even scaled a giant-high dropblock to peer into the ceiling’s shadowy recesses, and he had seen nothing. It was as if Cypress vanished when he entered the cavern.

Given that the dragon was more dead than alive, that seemed entirely possible. Still, Tang had not yet searched one place, perhaps because if he found the passage there, he stood every chance of dying in it.

The prince retrieved his guttering torch and climbed down to the pool. On the far bank, the cavern did not end in a true wall. The ceiling simply angled down and disappeared into the water, which was so fetid and brown with decay it was impossible to see a hand’s span beneath the surface. The passage, if the cavern had one, could only be hidden there.

Tang returned to the small pile of equipment he had salvaged from his dugout and prepared for his dive. He folded his tinderbox into its oilcloth and knotted the ends together so they would not leak. He pushed the stopper well down into his oil flask and used a bootlace to fix it to his sword belt. He emptied his waterskin into the pool, then refilled it with several breaths of air and slung it around his neck. Finally, the prince uncoiled his rope, tying one end to his sword belt and the other to a small boulder at the edge of the pond.

Tang waded into the pool until it became chest-deep, then doused his torch and wedged it into his empty sword scabbard. In the dim swamp light filtering in from the cavern mouth, he could barely see the ceiling of the grotto, sloping down like the roof of some huge mouth. He swam over to it and dove. The water turned instantly as thick and dark as plum wine. The prince rolled onto his back so he could use his hands and feet to push himself along the roof of the passage.

Tang’s heart began to pound in his ears and his throat grew tight, but he gave no thought to turning back. It was not that he felt no fear; on the contrary, he was filled with a cold, queasy dread that made his hands shake and his bowels churn. The thought occurred to him that the passage might have more than one branch. He could easily be swimming into an underwater labyrinth; in such suffocating darkness, he would never know it.

Dragging himself through the passage was hard work, and Tang’s breath did not last long. He turned over, then emptied his lungs into the black water. The prince pulled his buoyant waterskin beneath his body and allowed it to press him against the ceiling, then placed his lips over the mouth. Biting the stopper between his teeth, he carefully opened the skin and allowed a stream of stale air to seep into his chest. Closing the sack was more difficult. He had to use his fingers to push the stopper back into place, losing several precious bubbles when he slipped the digits into the corner of his mouth.

Tang continued forward, if not growing less afraid, then at least growing more accustomed to fear. Though he had lost all sense of direction, he no longer worried about becoming lost. No matter how complicated the labyrinth, he could always follow the rope back. He filled his lungs from his air sack two more times, each time allowing a few cherished bubbles to slip along his cheek as he pushed the stopper back into place. Even that loss did not trouble him. If he ran out of air, it would be much easier to pull himself back to the pond than to crawl forward as he was doing. Then he would simply find a couple of extra waterskins and resume his explorations.

A flicker of orange-yellow light caught Tang’s eye, and he began to hope it would not be necessary to turn around. He dragged himself forward. When the flicker became a diffuse gold-red gleam pushing its way through the murky water, he realized he had to be nearing Cypress’s lair. The glow was the color of flame, and fires do not burn underwater. More importantly, where there was light, Lady Feng was also bound to be. The prince pulled himself forward with renewed vigor—only to come to an abrupt stop as he reached the end of the rope.

Tang did not even consider going back for another length of rope. Instead, he sucked the last dregs of air from his waterskin, then untied himself and swam toward the light. He began to count heartbeats, not because he feared he would drown before he reached the end of the passage, but to give him some idea of how far it was back to the rope. The golden glow brightened slowly. His count had reached thirty by the time it was as large as a head. At fifty, his lungs began to ache for air, and the light was no larger than a harvest moon. When the count reached seventy, his limbs grew so heavy and weak that he could hardly move them. Yellow-orange radiance filled the whole passage ahead, and still the ceiling held Tang beneath the water.

The prince blew out the last of his breath and swam another dozen strokes. His count reached a hundred and ten, and the orange glow was so bright that he could see his hands silhouetted against it. His heart began to beat faster, pounding inside his chest like a forge’s trip hammer, and a trickle of sweet-tasting water seeped between his lips. At the count of a hundred and thirty, the golden light began to sparkle and shimmer, and the prince realized he had made a terrible mistake. Whatever it was, this radiance was too strong, too brilliant to be firelight. Perhaps his testimony to the Chief Judge had come too late; perhaps the spirits of his dead soldiers, angry at his hesitation, had created the luminescence to trick him. One hundred and sixty …

The ceiling lifted off of Tang’s back, and his head suddenly popped out of the water. With a great, racking groan, he sucked in the musty cave air, continuing until it seemed his lungs would burst. An orchestra of blissful purling echoed all around the prince, giving him the feeling that he had died and, despite his many faults, surfaced in the Land of Extreme Felicity. He exhaled and drew in even more air, as though he were trying to drain the cavern of its last wisp of dank atmosphere.

The chamber itself only added to Tang’s impression that he had surfaced in a place of eternal paradise. The ceiling and walls were draped with jewelry both ancient and new: thumb-sized diamonds set into gold rings, blood-red rubies strung end-to-end in long chains, emeralds as large as cat eyes dangling from ear clips of pure platinum. From dozens of ancillary passages poured streams large and small, all passing over beds of pearl and opal before they fell into a sparkling lake that filled the lower half of the cavern.

Unlike the brown soup at the other end of the passage, the waters here were as clear as glass, and the bottom of the entire pool was covered by minted coins of every imaginable size and kingdom. A short swim away, the coins rose up to form the glistening beach of an island made entirely of precious ingots—and more gold than silver. In the center of the isle stood a single oaken staff—no doubt Yanseldara’s—with three gnarled branches rising at the top to grasp a huge orange topaz. From the depths of this gem burned the fiery light that illuminated the entire chamber, glimmering so brilliantly that the prince could hardly make out the form of the tall, willowy woman standing beside it.

“Lady Feng!” Tang swam to the island, then stopped on the shore and bowed to his mother. “Will Third Virtuous Concubine honor her humble son with audience?”

The woman stepped away from the staff and peered down the slope at her son. Unlike most Shou women, she showed every day of her age—and then some. She wore her gray hair pulled into a tight bun that did little to lessen its unruly appearance, and her skin was as ashen and flaky as lizard scales. The crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes fanned out like spiderwebs to veil her entire face, while the curious way that she cocked her head only emphasized the contrast between the pop-eye through which she saw the outer world and the squinty white orb that was usually turned inward to watch the spirit world.

“Tang!” she said at last. “What do you do here?”

“I come to rescue you, Lady Feng.” The prince held his bow. It was not unusual to have an entire conversation with the Third Virtuous Concubine without receiving permission to rise. It was a good thing she was not a queen; he would have had to kowtow. “I also come to destroy Cypress’s spirit gem.”

“No. You mustn’t!” She began to pick her way down the ingot slope. “Cypress would know!”

“It does not matter. He already tries to kill me for rescuing you.”

“You risk life?” Lady Feng slapped Tang on the back of the head. “You are Shou prince!”

“Rescuing you is only way to redeem honor of Ginger Palace.”

“Do I ask to be rescued?” Lady Feng grabbed Tang’s chin and pulled his head up, then waved her arm around the glittering chamber. “Here is more wealth than all Imperial treasuries!”

Tang scowled at this, for his mother had always been too wise to value wealth above freedom. “What good are these riches? Whole room of gold and diamonds is worth less than nothing if it makes prisoner of you.”

Lady Feng’s squinty eye rolled in its socket, perhaps in dim recognition of the wisdom she herself had imparted to the prince. Her pop-eye, however, darted around the room from bauble to bauble, as though checking to be certain that each one remained in its place.

“Do not argue!” she ordered. “Wealth shown is wealth lost to thieves.”

Tang shook his head sadly. “You have dragon sickness.” He started up the ingot slope. “Show me where Cypress hides spirit gem; then we leave.”

“Go no farther, Tang.”

Tang stopped in his tracks. When Lady Feng assumed that tone, she was not a woman to be trifled with. His mother was capable of killing a man with the merest wisp of an incantation. Though he believed she loved him as any mother loved her child, she was a Scholar of Yen-Wang-Yeh, and to scholars of the Great Judge, life and death were merely aspects of one existence; even a son could not be sure his mother would care which state he happened to occupy.

After a moment’s consideration, Tang realized how to solve his dilemma. He faced his cronish mother. “I only try to protect your treasure, Lady Feng. Cypress thinks it belongs to him. We must destroy him.”

Lady Feng’s pop-eye flashed in anger, but the squinty one rolled around to study him. It was horribly bloodshot, with a milky iris and a black pupil that seemed as deep as the Well of Eighteen Hells itself, and Tang had not seen it since he was a little boy.

“Tang, you try to trick me?”

For the first time since his battle with the wyverns, Tang felt like a coward. He let his gaze drop and nodded. “But only to protect you from Cypress. Whether you understand or not, dragon sickness has made you his prisoner more than chains.”

The squinty eye trembled as though from a palsy, but continued to linger on Tang’s face for a long time. At last, Lady Feng said, “Tunnel is long. If we destroy spirit gem, how do we escape?”

“We carry extra air.” To demonstrate, Tang opened his water skin and filled it with breath. “Then I pull us through passage on rope I leave tied to other end.”

Lady Feng eyed the air sack for a long time, then reluctantly nodded. “But we do not smash gem until we are outside.” The squinty eye rolled back into her head, and she added, “Then we destroy Cypress and come back to cave of wealth!”

“Of course—if that is truly wish of Third Virtuous Concubine.” Tang ran a troubled eye over the glittering chamber; a month ago, his mother would have looked on the vast treasure with the mocking disdain of one who recognized such things as a worldly illusion. Now, it was all too easy to imagine Lady Feng returning to live out her life among these lonely riches. “Perhaps we even build palace for you.”

A pithy smile crept across the gray lips of the Third Virtuous Concubine. “Most excellent idea. You know where to find spirit gem?”

“Cypress wishes to be with love. Gem can be only one place.” Tang looked at the glowing gem in Yanseldara’s staff. “I get staff. You gather your things.”

As the prince turned to climb the ingots, a gentle wave rolled up the beach, stirring the precious coins and soaking his feet to the ankles. Tang scowled at the rising water, trying to imagine what might have caused the surge.

Lady Feng grabbed his arm and shoved him into the water. “You must hide! Cypress returns!”