The Scroll of Years by Chris Willrich

Author:Chris Willrich
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781616148140
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2013-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

“I have seen too many barbarians of late,” Exceedingly Vengeful Wu told Gaunt while preparing buckets of water, rags, and slim blades carved with rough but ornate handles suggesting tigers and carp and horses. Gaunt tried not to look at these. She lay upon a cot, propped by pillows and wracked by periodic pains through her middle. She gazed out through an oval window graced by a leaf-whispering branch growing through the skylight. Wu continued, “I do not mean to complain about you personally, Persimmon Gaunt. But the Emperor is allowing too much outside trade. It brings strange folk and strange ways.”

“You are a traditionalist?”

“Indeed. Organized crime is sometimes the last bulwark of decency. I don’t suppose you came on the same ship as a pale, mongoose-like man, and a very dark and powerful woman?”

“I have seen people matching that description,” Gaunt answered. “You must understand, that where I come from very dark people are not so odd, and pale people crowd the land like trees.”

She pointedly studied the forest. Outside, sun-lit blobs of cloud crossed a thick mass of blue-grey storm front, looking like ice islands sliding through a dark sea. Below, the pine trees of neighboring peaks speared up against the featureless canvas of nimbus, as though the mountains guarded the edge of this world. And who knew, perhaps they did.

“Wu,” she said, as if simply following her own trail of thought and not trying to divert Wu’s, “who lives on the other mountains?” For she had glimpsed other pagodas and even other travelers on the paths of the other peaks.

Wu grunted. “A vexing mystery. Even to the artist’s self-portrait. No one from this peak has ever reached another and returned to tell of it. The paths proceed downward through wreathing mists as far as anyone here has traveled. I myself once descended for three months, living off berries and honey, and neither reached nor sighted flat land. If there is commerce between peaks it must be by way of the cloud-dragons we sometimes sight, but such we cannot tame. Indeed, they can be a menace.”

“Dragons . . .” Gaunt mused, thinking of the one that had savaged the Passport/Punishment. Thinking of it made her shiver, but that was better than thinking only of her fears and pains. A new contraction seized her, and she breathed long, slow breaths until it passed. The true labor, Wu had said, hadn’t commenced, and might not for some time. Gaunt needed distraction. Even conversation with Wu would do.

“Do you know something about dragons?” Wu asked her. “One had been sighted now and again shortly before my downfall, out there in the world. A dragon unlike any seen in living memory. Might you know of it?”

“It?” Gaunt said. “I couldn’t say. I do know something of dragons, however. At least, the Western kind. They are articulated, brassy. With guts of fire like the volcanic mountains. Hatched from shooting stars, they are in immature form like embers spat from a bonfire, floating on the breeze.

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