Jade Empire Read online

  ‘You could stop them, Father.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We have eighty men. They have twenty. One word to your captain and they will not leave our borders.’

  Aram nodded. Clever, calculating Dev, yet with so much still to learn… ‘There are twenty of them here. There are millions beyond the border. Before you were born, a rajah like me tried to stand up to the foragers. You have been to the site of his palace. It is a place of annual pilgrimage. You have seen what they did.’ A hollow land, ruined. Obliterated.

  ‘I would rather fight and be obliterated than simply collapse, Father.’

  Aram turned to his second son, ten summers old. ‘Unfortunately, Dev, that is not a decision we can make. As rulers of Initpur, we are bound to look to our people. And with Jai gone, one day you will succeed me. This will be your burden to bear. We cannot stand against them, and a grand sacrifice is pointless. It is our duty to protect the people in our care as long as we can. Always remember that.’

  But Dev did not. He did not agree. Shunning his father’s advice, the next day he took a horse and two of the palace guards and rode away without permission. He visited three other rajahs in the area over many days as Aram fretted in his palace. When Dev finally returned, his father threw his arms around him and gripped him tight. Never do that again, Dev. I have lost one son…

  ‘You must not make you mother worry so, boy. Where did you go?’

  ‘I went to find who will fight,’ Dev said defiantly. But the strength leached out of his stance instantly. ‘No one. No one will stand against the Jade Emperor. One rajah I visited was still wealthy and powerful, but even he would not consider, even anonymously, sending men to a coalition against the Jade Empire. Another rajah would not see me, but his lands appeared to be in a similar state to our own. The third of the rajahs was poorer even than us. His people are starving and they have little more than a roof over their heads. But they are grateful! They are grateful for destitution and starvation because they have nothing left to give, so the Jade Empire now leaves them alone. No one seems to be willing to stand against this evil.’

  Aram nodded. ‘I tried to tell you. The Inda will never be an army. We are not made like that. Your great-grandfather told me once that this would happen. And this is not the end. This is but the beginning of the end. Soon there will be nothing left to take from the Inda, and our only value will be as territory. The empires both east and west will come to blows and we will be trodden down in the midst of the war. It is, sadly, our destiny. Your grandfather was a great believer in fate. In destiny.’

  ‘I do not believe in destiny,’ Dev replied, defiantly. ‘The future is what we make it. And I will make it a future for the Inda.’

  A small thrill of pride ran through Aram then, but he quickly tempered it. Whatever Dev did, it could not save the Inda. And it would surely damn him.

  ‘What of the southern lands?’ a small voice suddenly put in. They turned to see Ravi standing in a doorway. The youngest, just seven years old, had an intensity to his gaze.

  ‘The south?’

  ‘The sacred lands,’ Ravi said. ‘Men will not go there, I understand. Not even the foreigners. Is that not a place the Inda could be safe?’

  Aram shook his head. ‘The peril faced in the south is very different from the peril faced here, but it is no less real. The Island of Ghosts is no place for living men.’

  In fact, it was more than just the island. For a thousand years, the island that sat off the southern tip of the Inda Diamond had been deserted and shunned by the people, for the spirits that protected the place drove men into a mad frenzy of self-destruction, and they would be added to the ghostly ranks of the place’s protectors. But the last hundred miles in the south of the diamond-shaped peninsula was equally shunned and protected. A line of ancient markers marched across the jungle, and no weapon was permitted past that line. No man in his right mind crossed it and, if he did, he was not in his right mind for long. The only humans to be found beyond that line were in a few isolated monasteries close to the border, where devoted monks maintained the markers and the sanctity of the land, their faith protecting them from the madness and the spirits who wrought it.

  ‘No, the lands of the dead are not for us,’ Aram said again with a shiver.

  ‘Then there has to be another way,’ Dev announced.

  They hardly spoke the rest of the evening, sitting through a sullen and frugal meal.

  The next day, Dev was gone.

  Aram’s heart broke once more as the boy’s room was searched. Wrenching. Torn. He had somehow known it was coming. The signs had been plainly visible had he but accepted they were there. No. He’d not believed it. That Dev could go too. That he would lose another son. Dev had taken a horse once again, but no guard this time. At first, Aram presumed he had ridden off again to test the water with other rajahs. But the note he had left in his room made clear what had happened.

  Dev had discounted the south because of his father’s tales of the spirit protectors. He had discounted the Inda as unwilling to save themselves, from the bitter experiences of his previous attempt. He discounted, as did everyone, the horse clans to the north, who would never help, only raid. That left only one avenue. Dev had gone to petition the western empire, in the hope that they would be willing to do something about the Jade Empire. An old land of legions and discipline, swords and muscle, to put an end to the Jade Emperor’s masses with their infamous war machines. Two worlds, similar in so many ways and yet poles apart, who had been separated throughout history only by the Inda Diamond.

  Aram had sent out his men then, desperately, through his own lands and even beyond, trying to find Dev, but the boy was long gone.

  Gone.

  Aram’s heart ruined.

  The diminished family of the rajah of Initpur lived out the winter and the spring in misery. Aram was a broken man. His wife had stopped speaking the day Jai was taken, though it became clear within the next month that she was pregnant. She gave birth to a baby girl in the late spring, and young Ravi looked after mother and child, protective and wary.

  Summer came with an unseasonably long drought. The crops were a poor yield. It was a dreadful year, everyone agreed, and as autumn came around, Ravi felt a steadily growing fear of what would happen when the Jade Empire came again.

  They did not come. Autumn bled into winter, and the reality hit Aram hard. They were no longer worth looking to for tribute. Had Jai and Dev restrained themselves for one year, they would all still be here and safe – albeit safe, hungry and poor.

  Five more years passed. Aram’s hair turned from grey to balding, sparse white, though his beard remained long. Ravi grew into a precocious and thoughtful thirteen-year-old. His closeness to his mother and sister never changed, and Aram watched the boy’s heart shatter when his mother contracted a wasting disease in the winter and passed from the world of the living. Ravi found the statues of the old gods that had been gathered around her bedside and swept them away, declaring them meaningless. His sister lasted only one year longer before the same illness claimed her.

  As the body of the six-year-old girl rendered down to ash on the pyre, Ravi turned to his father.

  ‘This is a wicked world, Father.’

  Aram could do little but nod. In less than a decade it had stolen from him two sons, a wife and a daughter, as well as a kingdom, a future and hope.

  ‘I am leaving tomorrow,’ his youngest son said.

  No.

  How.

  Why?

  ‘Ravi…’

  ‘Please do not try to stop me, Father. I must go. I cannot be part of this world anymore. I will shave my head and take on the golden robe of a monk. I will seek peace in holy solitude.’

  All Aram could do was nod his understanding. It would be a blow to lose his last son, but how could he deny Ravi this? He knew, deep in his heart, that the only reason Ravi had stayed all this time was for his mother and his sister, and the boy might be right that the only place
left to find peace was in a monastery. Certainly even the Jade Emperor’s men were wary of offending gods. They never destroyed temples or executed monks, even when an example needed to be made for the people. It would be the safest place for Ravi. And there was no true kingdom of Initpur left for him to inherit, anyway. Just some fields and some huts and a half-ruined palace full of sad memories.

  ‘Go with my blessing, Ravi, and I pray that you find peace in your new world.’

  A family riven and scattered, a world oppressed, and a heart broken.

  His last boy left the next day, and the seasons turned once more. Around Aram, over the next decade, the Inda culture was systematically extinguished. Even the greatest rajahs were reduced to poverty and squalor. No word came of Jai, away in the east, or Dev, off to the west. No word even from his son the monk. Aram lived a life now dedicated only to the survival of the folk in his care.

  The Inda lived as best they could. Many continued to survive quietly as peasants. Some took to crime. In the northern mountains, not far from Initpur, a new bandit leader arose, and men of the sword flocked to him. Even most of Aram’s guards went to join the growing force in the hills. After all, what soldier wanted to continue in service to a lord who could reward him with nothing more than bread and a roof for his head?

  The time of the Inda was drawing to a close. If all was proceeding as Aram’s grandfather had predicted, soon the empires would come. Aram listened to the villagers in his hall prattle on about petty grievances, as though their arguments were not worth spit compared with what had already happened and what was yet to come. When they had finished and he had promised to think on the matter, he made the vizier hold the next visitor back and leave him for a few moments.

  Once he was alone in the room, Aram crossed to the map of the diamond-shaped Inda world on the wall. The paint was faded and flaking. With a sad and resigned air, he reached down and picked up an earthenware cup from a chipped table. Smashing it, he gripped a shard so tightly that blood dripped from his tight fist as he reached up to the map. With a single swipe, he carved off the small painted palace that had been the first victim of the Jade Empire, when they had come in their thousands and demolished that rajah’s realm. He then moved swiftly through the land, obliterating all those rajahs he knew to have gone, their estates swallowed up by neighbours who could afford still to pay tribute, others who had thrown themselves from towers in despair. One by one, he scratched them out of the painting. As he worked, he moved south, as had the empire. Finally, he stepped back. The only untouched part of the map was more or less blank – that southern land of ghosts, with the island hanging like a teardrop from the point of the diamond.

  More than three quarters of the rajahs had been erased. Only the richest rajahs remained, or those tenacious enough to live in squalor and poverty, like Aram. The world had already changed terribly. How long now before even the greatest rajahs were at his level? Not long. Especially now that many of their men were fleeing to bandit chiefs like the one in the north.

  He turned from the map and wandered across to the balconied window, peering out. His lands contained twelve villages and small towns. The last time any record had been taken, before the tributes began, the population had been around eight thousand. He would estimate it at probably half that now. And though they were no longer starving to death or being taken as slaves, the next stage of his grandfather’s great prediction was conquest.

  ‘I have to save them.’

  There was no reply. He was alone in the room. But he could feel the approval of Jai and Dev at the sentiment. The way the breeze ruffled the curtain beside him made it seem plausible that somehow they were here in spirit.

  ‘I must prepare. I will have to be adaptable. I cannot see the future the way my grandfather could, so I cannot plan too precisely. But I need to be ready, and so do they. The time is nigh.’

  He strode back across the room and opened the door. His vizier stood outside, looking surprised at this sudden display of energy by his rajah. It was understandable. Aram had done little but wallow and mope for years now.

  ‘Audiences are ended for the day.’

  A groan of dismay rippled through the gathered plaintiffs, but Aram waved it aside. ‘I want a full record made of every living soul and everything of value in this land that can be moved. I want it done fast. We must be prepared if we are to endure. The clouds are beginning to gather, my people, and they herald a storm the like of which the world has never seen.’

  And with that he turned and entered his palace once more, with the spirits of Jai and Dev nodding their approval as they walked invisibly at his side.

  Chapter 2

  The traveller in foreign lands sighs

  The moonlight shines upon his tears

  His home is behind him now

  And he must move ever forward

  The Traveller, by Gueng Ji

  Jai stood silent and still, concentrating on the blade before his eyes: his own chisel-tipped, razor-edged straight sword with the silver dragon hilt and the red silk streamer trailing from it. The weapon of a master swordsman, which he was. But so was the man he faced. The blade was unwavering, vertical, held in both hands like some sacred icon. The courtyard was soundless bar the faint whispering breeze that caressed the blossom on the trees at each corner, four trees of four colours to reflect the seasons and the four branches of swordsmanship that contained the forms.

  The man in the demon mask opposite him, with the archaic decorative armour of an Ishi master, maintained precisely the same pose – a stance that was as much ritual as it was educational – for the forms of steel had been taught thus in the Zu Academy since time immemorial.

  ‘Jai!’

  The voice, high-pitched and sharp as their blades, cut through the silence like a knife through satin. Jai had been studying his opponent throughout the long moments, waiting for the call. Many of the opening moves he favoured would not be of use against this one, either because of that demon armour or because of how he would react to them. Jai could identify two moves that might give him the opening he needed. One required Jai to act first. The other, his opponent. Either would be a gamble, but even as he sorted once more through all the information he had gathered and stored, he decided on the former. The heavy, bulky lower leg and footwear of the armoured man should hamper his ability to react, which he would only do correctly if he were inventive and widely read. Few of the Jade Empire could be said to be innovative. Change was frowned upon.

  Jai launched forward, sword aloft, now held only in the right hand, the left reaching out like a mournful lover, caressing the air as though this were naught but an elegant dance with a blade. Which, of course, was exactly what it was, for that was what the Zu Academy excelled in. He loped forward in high, arcing strides that were more akin to gymnastic leaps than steps.

  The armoured demon moved ritualistically to the right, one foot stepping purposefully, the other sliding in its wake, the sword spinning in an arc and dancing out to the left, still held in two hands.

  The attack of the mountain gazelle met with the defence of the bending reed.

  But in the books of forms, of which there were hundreds in the academy library, there were many minute variations of the standard forms, devised by masters over the centuries. The demon was rigid with his adherence to the traditional defence of the bending reed. There were nine variants, but a man who took such care and attention over the gear of his rank was not a man given to experimentation. And there were so many variants of so many forms that no graduate of the academy could know them all.

  Jai did not know them all either. But he knew more than anyone he’d met. If there is something to know, his grandfather had once told him, then it is worth knowing it. And so he knew the nine variants of the enemy’s defence as well as the form itself. And he knew the twelve variations of the attack of the mountain gazelle.

  The demon was unprepared. In every common variant, Jai’s left foot would be the first to plant and brace as
his sword came down in a diagonal arc right to left, designed to cut at waist height and allow the attacker to pivot past and prepare again. This variant was little understood, drawn from a dusty tome found in the dim recesses of the library’s darkest corner. Its author was a master who had been taken from the clans of the horse lords many centuries ago, and was not popular because of his racial origin. But he had been innovative. He might be shunned as unworthy by many, but Jai recognised value in the unpopular.

  His left foot skipped where it should have planted. His right came down and he spun on it, the sword coming round and suddenly descending from left to right. The demon’s defence was on the wrong side. He was beaten in a blow and he knew it. To his credit, he did not try a desperate change of defence. He did not have time, and it would have looked like poor showmanship for an Ishi master.

  Jai’s sword swept down and met the demon armour at the join of the laminated wood plates, where it would have cut the leather ties and scythed into flesh beneath had he not stopped the blade a hair’s breadth from landing.

  Carefully, he withdrew the blade and stepped back, lowering it to the side and bowing formally. The demon did the same, and once the ritual of it was concluded, he straightened, sheathed his sword and began to remove the helmet.

  ‘You are… unusual,’ the man said. A compliment or not, Jai couldn’t decide. An acknowledgement of skill, most certainly. Jai bowed again, and the Ishi master left the courtyard.

  ‘That was interesting,’ said the teacher, stepping down from the arcade at the courtyard’s edge. ‘I do not think Master Huang approved.’

  ‘In battle, Master Huang would now be dead and his approval meaningless.’

  The teacher frowned at Jai. ‘Survival and victory are paramount, Jai, but it is always better to win with finesse and an acknowledgement of tradition than otherwise.’

  Jai shook his head. ‘I do not agree, master. Respectfully, if tradition gets a man killed, then it is at fault. Victory is what matters.’