Precious Dragon Read online

  “This looks like it’s been abandoned, Zhu Irzh,” Chen muttered from underneath the handkerchief.

  “I think you’re right.” The demon, followed by Underling No, stepped out from behind the outcrop and began to investigate the cells. “No, there’s nothing here.” He poked at a thick stain on the floor with the toe of his boot. “I wonder what this was? Or who?”

  Chen gave him a curious glance. “Do you think these cells might have digested their occupants?”

  “I’ve seen weirder,” the demon replied.

  They walked on, leaving the decaying cells behind, and turned a corner. The smell of rot filled the air. Zhu Irzh, in the lead at this point, dodged back behind a column of gristle.

  “What is it?” Chen hissed.

  “More cells,” the demon answered, “But these ones are occupied.”

  Before he could stop her, Underling No shouldered past Chen and craned around the column.

  “I can’t see anyone,” she said.

  “Look. There.” The demon pointed. Chen glimpsed a foot, clad in a red velvet slipper. It was motionless.

  “I have to see!” Underling No declared and stepped into the room.

  “Wait!” Chen commanded, but it was too late. As soon as No set foot on the floor of the room that contained the cells, a sticky web-like substance fell from the ceiling and enveloped her. Chen felt something long and sharp touch his throat. Turning, he found himself looking along a spear’s length into the grass green insect eyes of one of the guards.

  30

  Mrs Pa gave a faint scream. Inari turned to see what had happened and echoed it.

  “Come on!”

  The black demon skittered over the roof and down to the ground. It bounded along the road towards them, moving on all fours like an ape. With Inari’s hand clamped to her arm, Mrs Pa broke into a hobbling run but was just in time to see a monochrome streak rush past them and confront the bounding demon.

  “Badger, be careful!” Inari cried but the badger growled only, “Run.”

  The temple was not far ahead now, but knowing what was behind them made the distance seem like a thousand miles. The badger’s growls were terrible but Mrs Pa knew that she and Inari were not going to make it. And if she died now, with none of the proper paperwork, slain by a demon, she would go the place that it came from. At least she would see Mai again, Mrs Pa thought as Inari dragged her along, but then came another dreadful thought: perhaps that was the essence of Hell, for you to know that you were in the same place as your loved ones, and to be unable to find them.

  Something flew through the air, a ball of dark, and hit the wall of the temple with a thud. It fell into the surrounding bushes and again Inari cried out: “Badger!” Mrs Pa, even used to heavy shopping bags, could not have lifted the badger up in his animal-aspect and yet the pursuing creature had thrown him like a football. She felt a hot breath on the back of her neck and terror made her tear herself free of Inari’s grasp, but her foot turned on a stone and her ankle gave way under her. She fell heavily, sprawling on the dusty tarmac. The thing shot over her head: it must have sprung at the instant that she fell and missed her, but now it was between her and Inari and the temple. She struggled up. The thing was crouching on its heels in the road. It spun round to face her and she saw again its wet red grin. But then the temple door opened, with such force that it banged against the white plaster wall and a voice cried out, “Stop!”

  It was so loud that for a moment Mrs Pa had a vision of the entire city shuddering to a halt, trams and cars stopping, people arrested in mid-motion and even the waves ceasing to crash on the shore. Yet the next moment, she wondered whether she had even heard it out loud at all.

  Someone was standing in the entrance to the temple. Not a very tall person, or a very imposing one. Someone slight, with a fall of dark hair and eyes that, even from this distance, Mrs Pa could see were blue. He was dressed in an old-fashioned suit, indigo with a Mao collar. He raised a hand.

  The thing was still grinning, but it remained in a crouch and Mrs Pa had the impression that there was some huge force pinning it down so that it could not rise. It turned, with painful ponderous slowness, and the figure at the doorway of the temple held out its hand, palm upwards.

  The thing sprang, bounding towards the temple and as it did so, Mrs Pa saw a young woman come running around the side of the building. She shouted when she saw the thing and immediately it leaped at her. She cried out as it lacerated her throat and in horror Mrs Pa saw her fall. The demon stood up.

  “Go back,” the figure at the door said. “Go back!” and it turned the palm face downwards. As it did so, the demon shrieked, and once more it split, losing all features and becoming a black rent in the air. Storms raged, sending a gust of lightning-scented wind through into the world of the city. There was a thunderous crack and the demon was gone. The air closed, but it looked jagged and trembling as if with heat, slashed by the demon’s passage. The temple stood untouched, in a last glow of evening sunlight, and then the sun slipped beneath the horizon and the shadow of night crept over the temple from the mountains.

  At the side of the building, the young woman rose, touched a hand to her ruined, bloodless throat, and sealed the flesh with a movement of her finger.

  “You’d better come inside,” the figure at the door said.

  Out of everything that had happened, Mrs Pa found this the hardest thing to believe: that she was sitting in a temple in the city in which she had lived for so many years, being served tea by the son of the Celestial Emperor.

  He had not introduced himself as such.

  “My name is Mhara,” he said. A calm, quiet person, Mrs Pa thought. She’d have liked him if she’d met him on a bus. She liked Robin, too—somehow, she’d have thought that a priestess of the son of Heaven would be different, but this girl looked ordinary, exactly like someone you might meet on a bus, come to that, and she was dressed not in flowing robes and a headdress but in cut-off jeans and a blouse. There was now no sign that her throat had recently been ripped out by a denizen of Hell and she had dressed the cut on the badger’s head with the kind of competence that one might have expected of a veterinary assistant, in spite of the badger’s growls.

  Mhara moved with a deliberateness that was hypnotic to watch. He set the tea down in front of Mrs Pa in a way that was almost ceremonial.

  “Thank you,” Mrs Pa said faintly.

  When he next spoke, Mhara addressed Inari, but he favoured Precious Dragon with a very sharp glance, as though he recognised the little boy. Precious Dragon stared back placidly.

  “Now,” Mhara said. “You’d better tell me what’s been going on.”

  When Inari came to the end of her account, she was knitting her hands together and it was again that Mrs Pa realised how great a strain Inari had been under, and what a responsibility she had taken on to bring them here: burdening herself with an old woman and a small child, when she could have been sitting on the deck of her houseboat.

  “… and I don’t know what these things are. They must be some sort of demon, but I’ve never seen them before,” Inari concluded.

  Robin shook her head, but Mhara said, “I know what it was. As soon as I saw it, I knew, but I haven’t seen such a thing for a very long time.”

  Robin said, as curiously as Mrs Pa felt, “What are they, then?”

  “They are kuei.”

  Inari’s mouth opened in shock. Robin said, “What? Surely not.”

  “What is a kuei?” Mrs Pa asked.

  “They are the storm lords. They are the beings who carry out the laws of Hell, such as they are. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they carry out the whims of Hell’s Emperor.”

  “But a kuei is huge,” Inari said. “I’ve seen them. They’re like great dragons, centipede-things—bigger than dragons. That thing was no bigger than a man.”

  “They’re not allowed to set foot on Earth in their natural form,” Mhara explained. “They would be too disruptive. So a
t Heaven’s mandate, they are forced to keep to Hell, and on the very few occasions that they enter the world of Earth, they must take a smaller form. But they still have powers.”

  “If the kuei are after me—” Inari faltered, but Mhara interrupted her. “Not after you, I think. They’re after him.”

  And everyone turned and stared at Precious Dragon.

  “I know you,” Mhara said. “But who are you? What are you?”

  “That’s the thing,” the little boy answered. “I don’t know.”

  “He’s my grandson,” Mrs Pa said. “He’s the son of my daughter, Mai.”

  “He may have incarnated somehow as your grandson,” Mhara said, “But I don’t think this is the spirit of a small child.”

  Mrs Pa kept quiet. She didn’t think so, either.

  “How did he come here? How did he enter this world?”

  “He came through Sulai-Ba,” Mrs Pa said. “Through the ruined temple.”

  “Then I think we should go back to Sulai-Ba.”

  “We were hoping to seek sanctuary here,” Inari said. “If the kuei are after us—”

  “If the kuei are after you, then this won’t be a safe place for you.”

  “But you’re the Celestial Emperor’s son,” Mrs Pa said. She had to bite back the words: young man. How quickly familiarity came! But Mhara’s quiet demeanour did not seem like that of a god. Mind you, from the little she’d actually seen of gods, that might be no bad thing. Mad Senditreya’s rampage through the city hadn’t impressed anyone.

  “I have limited powers. I defeated one of the kuei; I don’t think I could defeat many of them if they came all at once. You see, my father and I have had a disagreement. We still cherish one another—we are from Heaven, after all. But my father thinks that Heaven should be distancing itself from the human world; he thinks that humans have chosen Hell and taken their own path. And he thinks that if I am to insist on living on Earth, then I should have a palace where everyone should come and worship me.”

  “And he doesn’t approve of me, either,” Robin said. “As you might have gathered earlier on, I’m actually dead.”

  “Inari told me,” Mrs Pa said. “I must say, you look quite healthy for a dead person. But of course I saw—well, your throat. I don’t mean to be rude, but if you’re dead, what are you doing here?”

  Robin grimaced. “Special dispensation. I should have gone to Hell, really—I didn’t lead a particularly great life. I used to work at Paugeng, for Jhai Tserai. But for various reasons, I wasn’t sent to Hell but I can’t enter Heaven. Or at least, I can, but his family don’t like me. I’m a human spirit, not a heavenly princess.”

  “Ah,” Mrs Pa said. “You’re not just his priestess, then.”

  “No, she is not,” Mhara said. “But she is much loved.”

  “Just not by your folks,” Robin added. Impatiently, she brushed dark hair back from her brow. “The thing is, Mhara can’t really help your grandson, Mrs Pa, unless he knows what your grandson is.”

  “And that’s why I suggested we go to Sulai-Ba,” Mhara said.

  “It’s dark now,” Robin said. She pushed back the blind and looked outside. “They might come back.”

  “They’ll be at their strongest at dawn and dusk,” Mhara said. “That’s when the veils between the worlds are at their thinnest and the kuei can draw upon Hell for their power. But that doesn’t mean to say that they’re not dangerous at other times, especially if they act in a pack. It depends how many of them there are.”

  “I wish I could help,” Precious Dragon said, “but I can’t.”

  “Can you remember anything?” Robin asked him.

  “I remember being born. And my mother and father, of course, and our house. I think I chose to take this form but I can’t remember why.”

  “People sometimes choose to incarnate as something different in order to hide,” Mhara said, with another sharp glance. “To escape from someone who is pursuing them. If the kuei are after you, then it’s likely you were someone important, and chose to incarnate as a baby so that they wouldn’t find you. You’d be hidden by the newness of your form, you see.”

  “Then who was I?” Precious Dragon was frowning. “I wish I could remember, but—I recall rain. And a thunderstorm. I was outside and on my own, so it must have been before my birth. But that’s it.”

  “You must be exhausted,” Robin said to Mrs Pa. “Mhara, they can’t go to Sulai-Ba tonight. We’ll just have to do the best we can if something comes at dawn—the temple is warded, after all.”

  “I am so sorry,” Mrs Pa told her. She hadn’t wanted to make a fuss. “But I don’t think I could walk any further tonight.”

  And so they stayed, enveloped in the thick darkness that surrounded the temple, with the lights of the city seeming very far away.

  31

  The Insect Guard looked most surprised. Chen couldn’t blame her. He’d have looked a little startled, too, if he’d been holding a spear to a captive’s throat and the next had been seized round the head and dragged off into the shadows.

  “What the hell?” Zhu Irzh asked, wild eyed. Chen was already running forwards, sweeping Zhu Irzh and Underling No with him.

  “Never mind what it was! Do you really want to meet it?” Given the characteristics of the Ministry of Lust thus far, he was having visions of some crevice-dwelling arachnid, a great louse lurking in the moist rotting walls. Zhu Irzh appeared to agree; after a moment’s reflection, he sprinted after Chen, with Underling No creaking along behind.

  Another passageway, this time one that opened out into a domed atrium. There were cells on the far side of it but Chen did not have time to study them properly: as they entered the room, one of the insect-eyed guards dropped from the ceiling in a flurry of red silk robes. Her eyes were the colour of rubies. She carried a long scimitar that whistled around her head with a sound like the north wind.

  Underling No gave a tiger-growl. She kicked out and upwards at the guard, sending her flying. Another guard dropped from the ceiling and when Chen looked up he saw that there were three more, clinging to the meaty surface of the roof and bouncing gently like mosquitoes. Chen ducked as Zhu Irzh’s sword hissed over his head. The sword caught the guard neatly across the abdomen, black guts spilled out and the guard shrieked and shrivelled as if sprayed with insecticide. As she blackened and withered, her soul snatched down to the lower levels of Hell, a third guard dropped silently down to take her place. Chen threw a hasty spell: it snapped the guard backwards and spun her, twisting her in whirlwind formation until she bored down through the floor in a bloody splash and disappeared. The entire Ministry shuddered and quivered, throwing Chen to one side.

  “Must’ve hurt,” Zhu Irzh said, wincing. Regaining his balance, Chen jumped across the hole and sent another spell glancing upwards. It knocked one of the guards from the ceiling, but failed to accomplish any lasting damage. Zhu Irzh stabbed at the guard but she brought her own scimitar round; Zhu Irzh leaped out of the way and the guard sent the scimitar back and caught Underling No across the chest. No gave a gasping cough and staggered backwards.

  “No! Are you all right?” Chen shouted, but Underling No was coming forwards again, snarling, with a ragged tear across the front of her leather armour. She reminded Chen suddenly of a small fierce dog. Seizing the guard. No crushed her. The guard gave a startled squeak and was dropped limply through the hole in the floor.

  The fourth guard laughed. She undulated towards Zhu Irzh and No, lazily spinning her scimitar. Then, without warning, she struck. Zhu Irzh blocked the blow but the guard was fast; with her second strike, she drove him backwards against the wall. Chen sent a spell but it sputtered and fizzled into a small drizzle of ash. No was engaged with the final guard, fighting desperately. They had, Chen thought, saved the best for last. He aimed another spell but he could feel the magic running out of him now, draining away as the Ministry itself began to marshal its decaying resources and issue protection. There was a slapping sound as Zhu Ir
zh’s sword flew from his hand and hit the floor. Flesh oozed over it as the Ministry tried to digest an alien object.

  “Hey! Get back here!” Zhu Irzh yelled. The sword pulled and tugged but could not break free. Underling No’s swing took the head off the guard she was fighting: it bounced across the floor, lamenting and coughing obscene spells. Sparks flowed out of its mouth and spiralled up into the air, forming a glowing character: the word for death. Chen kicked the head like a football across the annexe and it dropped through the hole in the floor, which was now starting to close.

  As he did so, movement caught Chen’s gaze and he saw something sharp and bright sing through the air and bury itself in the guard’s left eye. The guard dropped like a stone, starting to wither and rot before she hit the floor. Someone stepped forwards, out of shadow.

  Zhu Irzh was staring, open-mouthed.

  “What the fuck,” he managed to say, “Are you doing here?”

  32

  Morning burned red in hell. Pin woke groggily, wondering where he was, and then he remembered. Oh. He crawled off the couch and found that Mai was pottering about in the kitchen.

  “I’ve made rice porridge,” she said. “Do you want some? Do you think you can eat?”

  “I’m not really hungry,” Pin told her, but as he spoke he realised that it wasn’t true: despite his ghostly form, or perhaps because of it, he was ravenous. “No, wait,” he added. “I will have some.”

  Mai put a bowl in his hand. The porridge itself looked grey and shadowy, but it was surprisingly good.

  “I spoke to my husband last night,” Mai said. “He told me that there’s a remedy man who understands ghosts, but he’s not very close to here.”

  “I think we’ll have to risk it,” Pin said, although the idea of venturing out into Hell again was horrifying. He fought the impulse to ask Mai if he could just stay here. Forever. “We have to find some sort of solution. Although the demon tried a remedy man, and he couldn’t do anything.” A thought struck him. “Where is your husband now? Has he gone to work?”