The Medievals 2 Page 3

  As Mulan considers Richard’s words, he adds, “I have trusted you with all we have learned about the Descendant. Now, I am asking you to trust us in return.”

  The Shen lets out a sigh, then reluctantly agrees: “Fine. Let us go. Quickly.”

  ◆◆◆

  A night and another day pass as Richard and his now four travelling companions slice their way through the dark fields of the Cloudlands.

  The sun is just now surrendering to the moon, and Richard is enchanted by the foggy gloaming that settles over the fruit stalks. While there is a ghostly appearance caused by the moon behind the scrim of the fog, Richard prefers moving through the field at night, as the Noseeums disperse with the fading sunlight and Richard no longer must continually swat away the invisible annoyances.

  “Say, you got two dents in that bed back home, or just the one?” Richard hears Loxley ask Mulan.

  Mulan does not respond.

  Loxley has kept close to the Shen as they move through the stalks, making no mystery about his attraction to her.

  And Richard can understand why. While the blindfold hides her eyes, it does not hide the Shen’s obvious beauty. Her unlined skin is the color of a peach that has been plucked the very moment it is ready, a light shade of yellow with a hint of pink. The contours of her face have been gently chiseled into her cheeks and jaw. Her ears peek out from her dark, silken hair, which reminds Richard of his mother’s hair when she was younger.

  In truth, much of this woman’s appearance, including her clothes, suggests to Richard that she comes from the Lands of the East.

  Loxley’s conspicuous attempts to charm Mulan have only been met with silence. But Loxley proves himself relentless.

  “No man’s ever written a sonnet for you at sunrise?" Loxley asks. "I could summon a thousand words on your fingers alone.”

  “When I joined the Order, I renounced all earthly desires,” she explains, although Richard wonders by her tone if she is sincere.

  “See, that’s a mistake,” Loxley says. “You keep the flint in one drawer and the steel in the other, and you’re just left without fire. What good is that?”

  “I am sacrificing for a greater cause,” Mulan retorts.

  But Loxley refuses to surrender. “What greater cause is there than love?”

  Ivanhoe laughs to himself, clearly having heard Loxley’s proclamation and finding it humorous coming from the thief. Richard realizes it is the first time he has heard such a sound come from the erstwhile knight.

  “El Cid agrees with the thief,” the Spaniard says, continuing to slice away at the stalks in his path. “There is no greater cause than love. But love can also lead to--

  “Not now, Spaniard,” Loxley says dismissively.

  “Tell us about this woman you loved, El Cid,” Ivanhoe prompts, less interested in El Cid’s tale than he is in annoying Loxley.

  “Oh, come on!” Loxley complains.

  Ivanhoe smiles to himself as Loxley no doubt curses him under his breath.

  “Dona Ximena,” El Cid begins, and it seems like a risk to his emotions even for him to say her name. “There is no woman more beautiful in all the world.”

  Richard remembers El Cid’s earlier account of the woman he calls Dona Ximena. How she was the daughter of a powerful man that El Cid killed in the city of Zamora.

  “The people of Espana said it would have taken an army of a thousand men to subdue the great El Cid. And El Cid is certain this is true. Viva El Cid,” the Spaniard boasts half-heartedly. “But El Cid was conquered by only one woman when he offered his heart to Dona Ximena and she betrayed him. She lured the great warrior to her bed, and there, she offered him wine mixed with sleeping powder. When El Cid awoke, he was chained to the bow of his own ship out at sea, the waves crashing against him.”

  Now it is Loxley’s turn to laugh. “What’d you expect, you dumb brute? You killed her father.”

  “We do not choose those that we fall in love with,” El Cid says with a shrug.

  Richard’s mind fills with the image of the girl from the market.

  Her violet eyes.

  The birthmark on the rounded part of her shoulder.

  And he remembers Master Cheng’s tale of the two lovers whose lives were linked at birth by the invisible twine, destined to find one another.

  Like El Cid with Dona Ximena, Richard did not choose to fall in love with this nameless girl. But there is a power greater than him that keeps the thought of her alive within his dreams. And within the shape of the stars.

  ◆◆◆

  “How do you fight when you cannot see?” Richard asks the blindfolded Mulan, who sits across the fire from him, the embers casting an orange flicker on her face.

  After they broke free of the dark fields several hours ago, the five of them set up camp for the night, allowing for rest.

  Mulan, who claims that she never sleeps, agreed to take the watch. But Ivanhoe, still untrusting of the Shen, suggested that one of them watch the watcher. And so now, Richard and Mulan sit across from one another, a fire between them, and the wide sky of the Cloudlands above them, the fog having thinned for a short spell.

  “Most people spend their lives making the mistake of trying to see with their eyes,” Mulan says. “But there are those that have sight, and those that have vision.”

  “Is that what led you to us? This vision?” Richard asks, wondering how she was able to track them through the Eternal Forest and beyond the Thundering Falls.

  “No,” Mulan says. “It was the scent of the Descendant. The bearded man with the patch over his eye…”

  “Ivanhoe,” Richard interjects.

  “He carries a torn piece of Wendolyn’s clothing,” Mulan says.

  “So you have met the Descendant? You know her?” Richard asks.

  “No,” she says.

  “But then, how did you recognize her scent from the swatch of clothing that we have been carrying?” Richard inquires, his eyebrows coming together.

  As a way of answering, the Shen pulls a small pouch from her belt. She unties the pouch and opens it, holding it out for Richard to look inside.

  Richard eyes a collection of glowing flower petals, and he is reminded of the luminous plants from the Eternal Forest and the Tree of Ten Thousand Roots.

  “What are those?” Richard asks, enchanted by their glow.

  “They are petals from the Flower of the Descendant, grown from the blood of the Sorcerer of Light, which flows through all of his lineage. Each Descendant has their own flower, and it bears their individual scent,” Mulan explains.

  The scent of the glowing petals seems to waft through the air across the fire, and indeed, he recognizes the smell from the torn, soiled cloth.

  But the scent from the petals is more potent. And as it fills his nose, it also seems to find his chest. The fragrance from the Flower of the Descendant warms Richard’s insides in an unusual way. It reminds Richard of the way his chest feels when he thinks about the girl from the King’s Market.

  “But how did the petals find you?” Richard asks, trying to understand the magic that has brought this woman to the Cloudlands.

  Just as Mulan opens her mouth to answer, something stops her, and she bends her ear to the sky.

  “Do you hear that?” she whispers.

  Richard hears nothing but the crackle of the fire in front of him, and the snoring of El Cid, which Richard has become so used to that he barely hears it anymore.

  Whatever Mulan hears, it has the woman on her feet instantly. With a sudden powerful breath of air, the Shen blows out the fire, the flames disappearing, leaving only a ghostly smoke.

  “Wake!” Mulan whisper-shouts to Ivanhoe, Loxley and El Cid, all asleep.

  “What is it?” Ivanhoe asks, the first to his feet.

  “A darkling,” Mulan says, her eyes searching the sky.

  “I don’t see anything,” Richard says, also scanning the night for any signs of a bird.

  “It is up there. I can hear the
flapping of its wings,” she confirms.

  “You gonna wake me up for birdwatching?” Loxley asks, rubbing his eyes. “Pulled me out of a sweet, sweet dream there. Actually, you were in it,” he says to Mulan with a smile meant to charm, but it clearly only annoys the Shen.

  “The darklings are Waldron’s scouts,” Mulan explains. “They spot us, and Waldron will know we are coming.”

  “There!” Ivanhoe points.

  Just then, the silhouette of a bird moves across the glowing circle of the moon, flapping its wings high above them.

  Mulan reaches out with her hand, aiming her fingers at the darkling. Richard watches as the power within the Shen’s fingers seems to slow the bird right there in the sky.

  Eeeee! The darkling cries out as it fights against the pull of the Shen, looking as though an invisible force is holding its feet.

  “It is too far away,” Mulan says, her face showing the strain of her efforts. “I cannot hold it much longer.”

  The bird flaps its wings harder and harder, struggling to break free of Mulan’s tenuous hold.

  The Shen shouts in defeat as the bird somehow kicks loose and begins to fly off.

  But just as Richard thinks all hope is lost to catch the bird -- THWIP! -- an arrow flies straight up into the night sky and finds the belly of the darkling, which instantly drops through the air and lands with a thunk at the feet of Loxley, who has a cocky grin on his face.

  Ivanhoe and Richard stare at the dead bird on the ground, the arrow sticking straight through it. The two of them have been rendered speechless by Loxley’s impossible shot.

  Loxley puts a hand on Mulan’s shoulder: “It’s okay to swoon, sweetheart.”

  But Mulan shrugs him off, tearing a piece of cloth from her cloak and ordering, “Dig a hole.”

  Richard obliges as Mulan wraps the darkling in the cloth.

  Loxley steps in. “Hold on, now, Soft Skin. That’s my dinner you’re burying.”

  “One eats the meat of a darkling at their own risk,” Mulan warns.

  “And why’s that?” Loxley asks.

  “It is said that the memories of the darklings survive in their flesh and blood even once they are dead,” the Shen explains. “And those memories will come to haunt those who dare to eat them.”

  “Eating memories? Sounds like poppycock to me,” Loxley says.

  “A man must choose his own fate,” Mulan shrugs. “But wake the sleeping giant and let us be on with it before more darklings fill the skies.”

  Richard looks to El Cid, who is still snoring on the ground, undisturbed by all of the noise surrounding the appearance of the darkling.

  As Ivanhoe wakes El Cid, Richard watches Loxley inspect his kill. Loxley kneels over it and studies the bird’s dead eyes for a moment. Then, he knocks it into the hole and backs away, gathering his things.

  “Ain’t that hungry, anyhow,” Loxley says, trying to hide his concer

  ◆◆◆

  The hot noon sun struggles to burn its way through the thick brume, which is as dense as it has been since Richard and the others entered the Cloudlands.

  “We are most definitely lost,” Loxley proclaims.

  “And how does the thief know this?” El Cid asks.

  “Well, I’ve never seen an exact map of the middle of nowhere, but I’d say we’ve been circling it for days now,” Loxley responds.

  Loxley is right. Since leaving the vast field of black stalks, the five of them have been feeling their way through the fog for nearly three days. And Richard has also wondered privately if they have not lost their way.

  “You think you know better, thief, then by all means, lead on,” Ivanhoe offers.

  Loxley shrugs his shoulders and calls Ivanhoe’s bluff: “Happy to.” Then he walks out ahead of Ivanhoe to lead the way. “I suppose even a blind pig finds an acorn every now and--”

  Suddenly, Loxley disappears, as if the fog has just swallowed him up.

  “Thief?” El Cid says.

  “Loxley? You still there?” Richard calls out.

  As Richard moves forward to search for Loxley, he can feel Ivanhoe grab the back of his shirt, keeping him from advancing.

  “Not another step,” Ivanhoe orders.

  Mulan comes up next to Richard, her shoulder aligned with his. Her nose seems to serve as her eyes as she sniffs for an answer to Loxley’s disappearance.

  The, the Blind Shen breathes in as deeply as she can -- a breath that fills her lungs with more air than one person can possibly take in -- and with a whoosh she expels a massive gust of air.

  The air has such a great force that it punches against the fog, sending it backward and clearing the space all around them. Mulan continues to exhale an impossible amount of air from her lungs, and the thick fog retreats even further.

  At first, a bridge is revealed, one that stretches over a vast ravine. The bridge starts no more than ten paces to their left. And it appears to be made from human bones.

  The Bridge of Bones.

  Richard remembers the Truscan King speak of the bridge, which will lead them to the Island of Forgotten Souls.

  Then, as the fog clears even more, Richard can make out the island on the other side of the bridge.

  “We found it!” Richard exclaims.

  They all stand there staring across the breach in the land, watching as the fog continues to roll backward.

  “El Cid thinks the Shen should have used her breath on that fog many days ago,” the giant says.

  “The fog helped us as much as it hindered us,” Mulan says. “It was the only way to keep our approach hidden from the darklings.”

  Ivanhoe nods, agreeing with Mulan.

  “Ay-up?” Loxley’s voice reaches up out of the ravine, the spectacle of the retreating fog nearly making Richard forget the thief altogether.

  Richard and the others look down to see Loxley hanging onto the side of the ravine, ocean waves foaming as they crash on the rocks far below.

  Loxley’s cloak has serendipitously snagged onto a small tree growing sideways out of the wall of the ravine, and that is the only thing keeping him from falling to his death.

  “Perhaps one of you has a bit of rope?” Loxley asks, his voice as solicitous as it has ever sounded on this quest.

  Richard looks to the others, and they all shake their heads.

  “I say we leave him there,” Ivanhoe suggests.

  “I heard that, Red!” Loxley shouts.

  Richard looks to El Cid’s waist, where he notices the giant’s belt, and an idea strikes.

  “Give me your belts, all of you,” Richard orders.

  As Richard takes off his own belt, the others follow suit and remove theirs, handing them to Richard. Then, Richard knots the belts together, creating a makeshift rope.

  “El Cid, you hold this end,” Richard says, handing him the buckle to El Cid’s massive belt. Then, Richard feeds the belt over the lip of the ravine and down toward Loxley.

  “Loxley, grab the belt,” Richard shouts down to the thief.

  The end of the knotted belts reaches Loxley, and he carefully grabs hold.

  “Pull, El Cid,” Richard instructs.

  With a nod, El Cid yanks on the belt. And he yanks with such force that Loxley flies up out of the ravine and makes a hard landing on the ground before them.

  “A warning would’ve been nice,” Loxley says as he stands and dusts himself off, back to his old biting tongue. “Where to?”

  Ivanhoe looks over to the Bridge of Bones. “We cross there,” he says.

  Richard moves to the start of the bridge, and the others follow

  “Wait,” Mulan says, and Richard turns to see the Shen retrieve a rotted log from the ground nearby. She turns the log over in her hand and reveals a dozen scurrying beetles.

  “This bridge is meant to keep the living from entering the island,” Mulan explains.

  Then, she grabs a handful of the nasty beetles and she tosses them out onto the Bridge of Bones. Before the beetles can s
curry away, suddenly a mass of skeleton arms comes to life and consumes the insects. Richard jumps backward, startled by the bridge suddenly coming to life.

  Then, just as quickly as the skeleton arms came to life, they go still again, falling back to their positions on the bridge.

  “So…we’re looking for another way across, then,” Loxley surmises.

  Ivanhoe scans the areas to the left and right of the bridge, then shakes his head. “This is the only way. We must cross here.”

  “And just how are we supposed to do that?” Loxley asks, beating Richard to the question.

  Mulan studies the bridge, seeming to make a calculation in her head.

  “We make a run for it,” she says. “As fast as we can, and all of us at once.”

  And then, before anybody can question her strategy, the Shen loudly yells, “Go!” as she bolts across the bridge.

  Richard’s heart pounds as he follows Mulan without a moment’s consideration. He does not look back to see if the others are following as he races across the bridge, the bones clattering together.

  Richard can feel the bones coming to life, reaching for his ankles and knees, and he just continues to run.

  Up ahead, he sees Mulan make it to the other side, the Shen far quicker than the rest of them. A bony hand reaches for Richard’s wrist, but he manages to swat it away. Richard swallows, then holds his breath as he sprints as fast he can.

  When Richard reaches the end of the bridge, Mulan is there to grab his arm and yank him free of the final cluster of skeleton arms. As he catches his breath, Richard turns back to see Loxley is right behind him, then Ivanhoe.

  Meanwhile, El Cid, who is slower than the others, is so heavy that the bridge seems to be breaking under the weight of his massive body as his feet hit the bone slats.

  Just then, the entire bridge pulls loose from the other side of the ravine, and Richard watches as it falls away.

  “Jump, El Cid!” Ivanhoe shouts.

  And the Spaniard takes a final leap toward land just as the bridge falls from beneath his feet. Richard watches as El Cid flies through the air and just barely catches the lip of the ravine. As El Cid hangs there, several skeleton arms try to pull El Cid down as the bridge falls