Part 14 (1/2)

”No. She's that beautiful. I saw her once. Men would do anything for her. No woman like her has ever lived. But she's that terrible, too, if you look past her beauty. Lord Wu believes she conspired in the doom of the Princes.”

”Why involve me?” Silly. This was the deadline Kw.a.n.g and Chiang had been racing.

”You're Nu Li Hsi's son. Come on. Hurry. We have to hide you. She knows about you.”

It was all too sudden and confusing. w.i.l.l.y-nilly, tossed by the whims of others, he fled a woman he didn't know.

O s.h.i.+ng was, Wu believed, the strongest Power channel ever born. But he hadn't the will to back it, nor the training to employ it. He had to be kept safe while he grew and learned.

”Oh, lord,” Tam sighed. They were three miles from Liaontung. The band included Lo, Chiang, Kw.a.n.g, and a Tervola named Ko Feng.

A black smoke tower had formed over Liaontung. Lightnings carved its heart. Here, there, hideous faces glared out.

”She's fast,” Ko Feng snarled. ”Come on! Move it!” He ran. The others kept up effortlessly. Being physically tireless was an axiom in s.h.i.+nsan. But Tam....

”d.a.m.ned cripple!” Feng muttered. He caught the boy's arm. Lo took the other.

The black tower howled.

”Lord Wu will show her something,” Kw.a.n.g prophesied.

”Maybe,” Feng grumbled. ”He was waiting.”

Tam found most of the Tervola tolerable. He liked Lord Wu. But sour old Feng he loathed. Feng made no pretense of being servant or friend. He plainly meant to use Tam, and expected Tam to reciprocate. Feng called it an alliance without illusion.

Their flight took them to a monastery in the Shantung. Feng left to rejoin his legion. Elsewhere, the Demon Princess routed the Dragon Prince's adherents.

Her thoughts seldom strayed far from O s.h.i.+ng. She traced him within the month.Tam sensed the threat first. Pressed, his feeling of the Power had developed swiftly.

”Tran, it's time to leave. I feel it. Tell Lo.”

”Where to, Lord?” the centurion asked. He didn't question the decision. One of his darker looks silenced Select Kw.a.n.g's protest. That made clear whom Wu had put in charge.

O s.h.i.+ng knew little about the nation being claimed in his name.

”Lo, you decide. But quickly. She is coming.”

Kw.a.n.g and Chiang wanted to contact Wu or Feng. ”No contact,” O s.h.i.+ng insisted.

”Nothing thaumaturgic. It might help them locate us.”

They didn't argue. Was Wu using this hejira to further his education?

Again they were just miles away when the blow fell. This time it was mundane, soldiers directed by a Tervola Chiang identified as Lord Chin, a westerner as mighty as Lord Wu.

”Tran,” said Tarn, as they watched the soldiers surround the monastery, ”take charge. You're the woodsman. Get us out. Everyone, this man is to be obeyed without question.”

There were complaints. Tran wasn't even a Citizen.... Lo's baleful eye silenced the protests.

Chin stalked them for six weeks. The party declined to six as the hunters caught a man here, a man there. Chiang went, victim of a brief, foredoomed exchange with Lord Chin. He didn't choose to go. Surprised, in despair, he fought the only way he knew.

His pa.s.sing allowed the others to escape.

In the end there were Tam, Lang, Tran, Kw.a.n.g, Lo, and another old veteran from the Seventeenth. They hid in caves in the Upper Mahai. Their stay lasted a year.

Men drifted to the Mahai, to O s.h.i.+ng. The first were regular soldiers from legions torn by the conflicting loyalties of their officers. Later, there were Citizens and peasants, fleeing homes and cities ruined by the Demon Princess's attacks.

Lord Wu, though far from Mist's match in the Power, won a reputation as a devil.

Her chief Tervola, Chin, could defeat but never destroy him.

O s.h.i.+ng gave the recruits to Tran to command.

Tran played guerrilla games with them. His tactics were unorthodox and effective.

Much enemy blood stained the rocky Mahai.

Tam learned to keep moving, to be where his foes least expected him. He learned to command. He learned to stand by his own judgment and will. He learned to trust his intuitions, Tran's military judgments, and Lang's a.s.sessments of character.

In the crucible of that nightstalk he learned to control and wield his awesome grasp of the Power.

He learned to survive in an inimical world.

He became O s.h.i.+ng.

Mist's attempts to hunt him down became half-hearted, though. Overconfident of her grip on s.h.i.+nsan, sure time would bring the collapse of the eastern faction, she and herTervola became embroiled in foreign adventures. Greedily, her Tervola devoured small states all round s.h.i.+nsan's borders.

It was a different s.h.i.+nsan without the balance and guidance of the Princes Thaumaturge. Everything speeded up. Patience and perseverance gave way to haste and greed. Old ways of doing, thinking, believing, collapsed.

In one year six men became thirty thousand. More than the barren Mahai could support. Peasants and Citizens received war-training in their Prince's struggle to stay alive.

”It's time to move,” Tam told his staff one morning. He seemed almost comical, commanding captains ages older than he. ”We'll go to the forest of Mienming. It's more suited to Tran's war style.”

Lord Chin was-adapting. He was using a semisentient bat to locate and track Tran's raiders. Food could be stolen but concealment could not.

The old sorcerers returned to their commands and prepared for the thousand-mile march. No one questioned O Sning's wisdom.

M ist's troops met them at the edge of the Mahai. Skirmis.h.i.+ng continued throughout the long march. A third of O s.h.i.+ng's army perished forcing a crossing of the Taofu at Yaan Chi, in the Tsuyung Hills. For three days the battle raged. Sorceries murdered the hills, and it seemed, toward the end, that O s.h.i.+ng would become one with the past, that his gamble had failed.

Tam redoubled his stakes, raising h.e.l.l creatures few Tervola dared summon.

Mist's army collapsed.

Eyebrows rose behind a hundred hideous masks as the news spread. Chin defeated?

By a child and a woodsman untrained in the arts of war? Six legions overwhelmed by half- trained peasants scantily backboned by the leavings of shattered legions?

The Tervola weren't bemused by Yo Hsi's daughter. They didn't enjoy being ruled by a woman. Quiet little missions penetrated the Mienming. This Tervola or that offered to slip the moorings of a hasty alliance if O s.h.i.+ng dealt her another outstanding defeat.

Seizing power wasn't the lodestone of Tarn's life. Survival was the stake he had on the table. Chin was a tireless hunter.