Dragonoak (7 page)

Brightly
coloured fish darted beneath the surface, moving like paint on
glass, and I traced the waves back to the horizon, not for one
moment accepting that a single stretch of water connected us to
Asar. When I was on the sea, it was impossible to believe I'd ever
been anywhere else; once upon a time, I'd thought I might find work
in the farms stretching out beyond Mahon, but there wasn't anywhere
else for me, anywhere but the sea; and until we cast anchor, using
row-boats to reach the narrow strip of beach, I was
home.

“Perhaps
we are finding that Isjin is taking a nap in this temple, yes?”
Akela said, slapping me on the back when my feet didn't want to
shift from the sand. “Or a real phoenix! How much are you thinking
they are paying for that?”

Ten
minutes in and Akela was the only one in high spirits. The path
drawn across the map was clear, but the jungle proved to be close
to impossible to navigate. A century of heat coiled beneath the
canopy, and we were drenched within minutes, arms scratched by
low-hanging branches and grasping shrubs, and no matter how we
hacked at the thick undergrowth ahead of us, the jungle retaliated
tenfold, drawing in closer.

A
thousand insects decided to bite me in particular, and someone
grumbled, “No wonder this temple ain't never been found. There's no
getting through here.”

“If this
is a hoax, Varn's gonna know we're ain't happy,” Tizo said, to a
half-hearted murmur of agreement. We'd stopped caring about gold,
only wanting to be free of the jungle. “Damn traitor.”

Two
hours later, I'd finished off half my water, and was strongly
considering plastering myself against Akela's back and letting her
carry me the rest of the way. We'd taken more turns than the map
suggested we should, but Tizo assured us she knew the way back. It
was only a matter of following the smell of sea-salt, she'd said. I
didn't know how she could smell anything over the dirt and
sweat.

Relief
came in the form of fruit the red-yellow-green birds had yet to
stumble across, and refreshed, we carried on, until the ground
beneath us abruptly turned into a sharp incline. The trees ran down
the slope, canopy now beneath us, and all of us stared out across
the green, until we saw it: the very top of a sandstone temple,
pushing through the leaves.

The
trouble we'd had tracking it down was set aside in favour of
cheering, and led by Tizo, everyone charged down, hacking at
branches and ripping vines out of their path. I trailed behind, not
interested in gold, and found that I wouldn't have been
disappointed, if that was what I'd come along for.

The
temple was similar to the one in Mahon, though far bigger. The
edges of the steps had been worn and rounded, and the entrances no
longer held their original shape, rubble filling the doorways. If
there'd been carvings decorating the outside, those were lost to
time, but the golden phoenixes were there, just as we'd been
promised.

They
stood on stone pedestals, some the size of my fist, others so large
they could've easily wrapped their wings around me. No one asked
why they'd been left there, why the temple had been abandoned and
forgotten so suddenly. They were only interested in prying the
phoenixes free of the stone that held them up, but I was drawn to
the dark of a doorway.

Carefully stepping over the rubble, I gripped the doorway,
looked left and right down the corridor, and hoped nothing had made
its den in there. It was dim inside, but the few windows let in
light enough for me to find my way. I walked with a hand splayed
across the wall, feeling the mismatched tiles of a mosaic beneath
my fingertips. The colours were almost entirely faded, but I made
out vague figures: a woman standing with open arms, red wax
dripping between her fingers; a man with a cloth folded across his
eyes, reaching for the sun; a child kneeling at the edge of an
ocean.

I made
my way deeper into the temple, unable to work out why it had been
left behind. Many rooms and corridors were blocked off, but the
destruction in the temple had been dealt by time and time alone. No
longer able to hear the others outside, I came to a corridor where
the only window was blocked by a bird's nest, and I barely saw the
shape of the comets I felt carved into the walls, rushing through
the stars, towards Bosma.

I didn't
know what I was looking for. The people of Canth seemed so content
when they spoke of Isjin; perhaps I wanted to understand
why.

Something drove me on, and I felt my chest tighten before I
realised that something other than my footsteps filled the
corridor.

A low,
sorrowful note rang out, passing someone's lips as though it was
the only truth left within the world. For a moment, it sounded the
way the ocean felt, when I stared down at the clear waters, at home
atop the rocking waves, and then words tumbled out. A language I'd
never heard washed over me, words rendered worthless by the weight
of the tune. It was old, older than the temple, as though it had
been built up around the song itself.

“Hello?”
I called to the darkness, but found myself sad to have spoken. To
have interrupted the song, if only for a second. It was close to
me, too close, as though it had been sung to me every night as a
child.

I took a
step forward and the song stopped.

The
shadows moved, and though I was no longer alone, I wasn't
frightened, either.

A woman
stepped forward, and the first thing I saw – the only thing I could
look at – were her eyes. They were white as the moon, obscured by a
haze that became her, and though I didn't want to weep, I couldn't
imagine how I could bring myself to smile.

Long,
black hair tumbled in waves from beneath the red swathe of cloth
she wore wrapped around her head, long red cloak clinging to her,
in spite of the heat. She looked at me and her lips parted, fingers
pressing gently to my cheeks. I didn't flinch, didn't take a step
back. Something had welled up within me, a warmth the sun couldn't
contend with, a feeling of ease, of belonging, that the sea hadn't
brought me.

“Aejin
yu ka Aejin,” the woman said softly, staring into my eyes as if
they were as brilliant as her own. I felt the words more than I
understood them, and tilting her head to the side, she said,
“Hakora yora. You are still brand-new.”

“I...”
Trembling hands found her wrists. “I know you.”

The
woman reclaimed her hands and stepped back.

“You
know yourself,” she simply said, and no matter how I longed for it,
she didn't repeat those strange words that had cut right through
me.

“Northwood!” Akela's voice echoed through the temple,
tumbling roughly through the present.

The
woman in front of me lifted her brow and I turned, stepped back and
called out, “I'm here.”

I
glanced around the corner and saw Akela wrapping her arms around a
great, golden phoenix, as if to stop it from taking
flight.

“The
others, they are wanting to know if there is anything worth taking
in here,” she said.

“It's
just stone. There's nothing else left,” I said, turning to find the
woman gone. “There was...”

I said
nothing more, stared blankly into the darkness, and Akela stepped
in front of me, saying, “Northwood, something is wrong?”

“There
was a bird. It... it made me jump,” I said, knowing there was no
point in heading into the darkness, deeper into the temple. The
woman was gone, and I felt no different than I had before seeing
her, before hearing her.

Akela
furrowed her brow and said, “I did not wish to be making you think
that there really was a phoenix inside,” as she laughed at my
expense. I managed a smile and followed her out, unsure of why I
was keeping the woman's presence to myself. Back out in the light,
I could almost convince myself that I'd been alone in there; that
no one would ever believe otherwise.

The
journey back was far easier, even with golden birds to carry. I was
given what remained, the smallest phoenix with barely any details
etched into it, and we headed back through the ever-thickening
jungle, coming out on the beach a mile from Tizo's ship.

Akela
sat in the sand as the rowboat ferried people back and forth, and I
picked shells out of the surf. I washed away the sand as the water
lapped at my hands, and threw back anything that didn't shimmer. I
slipped the more interesting shells into my pocket, taking better
care of them than the gold phoenix I'd let sink into the
sand.

“If it
is tomorrow and you are not busy, perhaps you are coming with me,”
Akela said, watching me pace up and down the beach, toes in the
water. “The crew, they are not having a problem with you coming, if
I am pretending I am needing you there. Not that I am not
appreciating your help with the translation, yes, but sometimes, I
am even more intimidating if I am not reacting to anything that is
being said to me.”

“Maybe,”
I said, holding out a hand and helping Akela to her feet as the
rowboat returned for us. “If I make it to the docks on time, I'll
come along.”

Back
home, Reis was out. It wasn't often that they left the books
unattended for the day, and it was always strange to be in the hut
without the accompaniment of their frustrated sighs and the scrawl
of their quill. Kouris had taken the day off to do much of nothing,
and had a great propensity for lying out on the pier, soaking up
the sun.

Some
days, I could manage to relax half as well as Kouris. With the
memory of the woman from the temple relegated to the back of my
mind, I placed the golden phoenix on my shelf along with the shells
I'd found, and decided that I'd do well to spend the rest of the
day following in Kouris' example.

“Alright, yrval,” she said as the pier creaked beneath my
toes, letting me know she was awake. “How was that treasure hunt of
yours?”

I
shrugged, lowering myself and lying so that the top of my head
almost touched hers, horns curving back and framing my
face.

“Tizo's
pretty happy with the haul. She'll probably be bragging for months.
I half-expected the boat to sink on the way back, what with all the
golden phoenixes we found,” I told her. “Found some new shells,
too.”

Kouris
hummed, impressed, having expected us to have fistfuls of rubble to
show for our efforts.

“What
was the temple like?”

“Old.
Crumbling. There were a few faded paintings, but we took everything
else of worth.”

Eyes
closed against the relentless Canthian sun, I tried to recall what
the red-cloaked woman had said to me, but her words became
shapeless, weightless. The song too faded as the to and fro of the
surf and the sloshing of the waves drowned it out, and instead, I
let my mind wander back to when the last notable storm had hit the
sea around Mahon. Five weeks. Five and a half. The pressure in the
air was building; there was bound to be another soon.

Kouris
and I idly spoke in Svargan for a few hours. I'd say the first
thing that came to mind and she'd correct me. Recently, more and
more often, she'd only need to reply to me. Months ago, I'd decided
that if I was going to live forever, I wasn't going to succumb to
boredom before the age of thirty, and had set about learning all I
could of Kouris' first language. It was rougher than Canthian, but
felt much bigger; I liked them both, but I liked being able to talk
to Kouris like this.

“How
often does Yin Zhou come to Port Mahon, anyway?” I asked, rolling
onto my front and propping myself up on my elbows.

Kouris
blinked her eyes open to stare up at me upside down, crinkling her
nose.

“Yin
Zhou turns up whenever she's wanting to,” she said. “Every two or
three years. Sometimes more, sometimes less.”

I put a
hand on Kouris' left horn, and ran my nails across the carvings
Reis had worked into it.

“She
could help us, couldn't she? Reis is always saying that she runs
Canth, that she has some sort of deal with the Queen. So she could
help us get back, right?”

Kouris
paused. We'd had versions of this conversation a hundred times
over, but she didn't want to point that out. Not again.

“Rumour
has it Queen Nasrin's done business with Yin Zhou, aye. But say she
does come sailing into port. What's making you think she'd do us a
favour, yrval?”

“You're...
you
. Queen Kouris! And Atthis is here, too. That still has to
count for something, right?” I asked, grasping. Kouris' mouth
twitched into a frown, and I said, “Well, what about Reis? She owes
them, right?”

“Reis
might've got their leg blown off saving Yin Zhou's life, but look
around. Reis has all the gold they could ever need, not to mention
all of Mahon. I'd say that's pretty good compensation,” Kouris
said, and I fell back against the pier, huffing.

There had to be something one of us could do to earn Yin
Zhou's favour. I tried to escape the obvious answer, but could only
think in circles for so long;
I
could earn her favour. Surely there was someone
she wanted brought back. Surely I could promise to give her another
chance, should something go awry. I held my hands up, squinting at
the sunlight flowing between my fingers, and told myself that I
wouldn't be scared.