Tanlin was carried more than led by the five guards that surrounded her. Her crime was officially listed as "treason" though she considered herself as more of a patriot than a traitor.
:The only traitor in this place is that man who sits on the throne and calls himself king, but rules without the will of Heaven,: she thought fiercely.
It had been nearly six years since the disappearance of Tai's rightful king, Gyousou Saku and the kirin of Tai, Taiki. What could only be rightly called a usurper now sat upon the throne. Tanlin was more aware of what went on within the confines of Whitejewel Palace than an average person. The previous king, Kyou-ou had been a man fond not only of creature comforts, extravagant jewels and silks, and a generous patron of the arts (so generous and extravagant was he that, even before his kirin had underwent shitsudou, the kingdom's treasury had been bankrupt) but also a great lover of women. He had had an entire wing of the palace devoted as his harem before he'd died. On his own ascension, as Gyousou was releasing servants and firing musicians left and right, he had often wondered what should be done with the burden of all of the women in the royal harem.
:Being the uptight, virtuous, military sort, the general wasn't interested in dallying about with us ladies,: Tanlin thought with a feeling of lingering amusement at the look if shock and dismay she had seen on the new kings face as he finished his first tour of the royal palace and discovered just how vast the collection of women that his predecessor had been housing (at the expense of the state no less) really was.
The women of the harem had been fed and clothed with the finest during the reign of the former king, and had also had an army of servant to attend to them. Unlike the musicians, the courtesans of Whitejewel Palace had no real marketable skill other than their, ah… skill. The newly crowned King Gyousou had not, in good conscience, been able to simply turn them out into the cold without a means for the courtesans to support themselves. It was another mark of his kindness that he'd simply shelved the matter for later discussion and cut their inner-palace budget to a minimum then released nearly all of their servants. There had been a tempest in a tea kettle in the day that the pampered palace ladies had learned that they were all expected to learn to care for themselves… the delicate blossoms had never once so much as had to lift a finger to do menial tasks were now expected to launder and clean and wash their own articles and tidy their own chambers.
:There is no denying that, though his time of rule was short, General Saku was a man of vast virtue… if more than a little uptight.:
It had been later on that year that King Gyousou had disappeared while quelling a rebellion in one of his northern provinces. The women of the harem had (then) felt the person who had taken over the court in the chaos surrounding the disappearance of the ruler was an improvement on him. General Ansen, the general of the Left (and the former General Gyousou's "twin jewel") took over the court on the absence of king and kirin in order to hold things together supposedly until the king and his kirin could be found once again.
:After six years with no sign of either of them, I don't think anyone else is buying Ansen's claim to power as being only a temporary seizure during an interregnum.:
Especially not once the Black Guard, Ansen's own private army comprised of cast-offs and mercenaries from the other kingdoms, started showing up and securing key locations. At first it had been touted as "pacifying the countryside" in the absence of the king. Tamlin, a courtesan attached to the west wing of the palace had only had the rumors going around the palace to believe, and at first, along with all of the other women of the harem, she had believed the official story.
:I feel like I was so naïve back then,: she thought ruefully.
The women of the harem were generally kept within the harem walls anyway so they had little to go on but the gossip and rumors flying through the palace. The palace itself was isolated from the rest of the world below by the height of the mountain on which it was built. Even then, and with the general preference within the harem for the more liberal reign of Ansen, there had been questions about him. The military, as loyal to Ansen as to their liege Gyousou, caught onto the danger too late.
It had been three years ago when Ansen's "temporary" grasp of power became a full-blown coup. Tanlin had heard through the rumor mill that a secret cabal of some officers and civil officials that resented Gyousou's rise to power had banded together and killed him during the civil conflict and kidnapped the kirin of Tai. Ansen had "reacted" by ordering his personal army, the Black Guard to round up the traitors and put them to death. Tamlin hadn't been aware of it at that point, but this purge was actually a coup by the usurper to get rid of the last true supporters of the king and put his own men in place.
:It was around this time that the first of us began to disappear,: Tanlin thought with sorrow and regret.
If only she had known, there might have been something she could have done, some way she could have gotten word out or help before she too had been trapped within the walls of the harem. When she thought of how she had spent her afternoons primping before the mirror and trying on outfit after outfit to determine which one was more likely to catch the eye of the current man in power, she could only regret her foolishness.
It had started with Kelya, one of her rivals (they had all been rivals more or less in those days, but Kelya had been a particular rival of hers with her milk-white skin and refined oval features). She had been summoned to the rooms of Ansen. It had been kept quiet at the time, but rumors always circulated through the harem. When she had not returned the next morning, most girls had taken it as confirmed that Ansen had chosen a favorite and had his concubine's quarters moved closer to his own. After several days had went by, another of the courtesans was summoned. This caused a small wave of gossip, but no real fear or anxiety… that came later, when the numbers of the courtesans who were missing started to grow at a steady rate.
:It was also at this time when he started bringing in women from the outside.:
That had caused a sea-change in the way that the harem was run. First, there were guards posted everywhere. But that was not the most shocking thing, the most shocking thing was that the women brought in were not courtesans at all, but rather they were true noblewomen! From every province which would not immediately swear their fealty to the usurper, Ansen had taken hostages to compel the magistrates and noblemen of those places to rule their counties as well as they could… or their families would suffer the consequences.
The women of the harem got their first real news of the outside world, and the picture it painted had not been pretty; black guards had taken over the positions formerly held but officers in the military of the kingdom of Tai, the countryside was overrun with youma, and crops were not as easy to plant due to a decline in population.
:Because there's nothing like a herd of rampaging monsters on your land to mess with your population numbers.:
It was then that Tanlin had decided that she would do what she could from her position inside the palace to help the true defenders of the kingdom of Tai do what they could to restore their poor kingdom to the balance of Heaven. She listened to rumors and tried to gather information but she'd had no real way of getting it out to anyone who would do something with it. As a spy, she was… well, she was probably not cut out for it. She had tried to search around the palace for any news of the rightful king, and had wound up getting herself caught and sentenced to execution by the usurper-king instead.
The numbers of the original courtesans from the previous king had numbered well into the triple digits but after three years of disappearances they were all almost all gone.
:I'm one of the last of them,: Tanlin thought with regret as she was led into a part of the palace she had never seen before.
She didn't know where it was she was going, just the same as she didn't know where it was her sisters had gone, but Tanlin was certain she wouldn't be returning from it.
The place where she was being led to was in a section of the palace she had never seen nor heard of before, it was in a small tower, down a staircase under a hatch in the floor guarded by soldiers ringed all around it from above, there was a long corridor with many doors, all of them locked, then a door in the wall sharply to the right led her down another staircase that went down for so long Tanlin thought she might be walking all the way down the mountain itself. At the landing a the bottom of the stairs was another door, this one locked with a great number of locks.
Waiting for her on the other side of the door was Ansen himself.
:I can't believe there was a time when I thought him handsome!: Tanlin thought with venom. :If my mouth wasn't gagged I'd spit on him.:
Despite the fact that he was indeed a usurper, General Ansen was a physically attractive man. His form was lean and broad of shoulder, with a leonine grace that came from maintenance for the arts of war. His face indeed had a graceful evenness to it, his hair was back as a raven's wing, but there was something about his eyes… they held a sharpness, but unlike King Gyousou's which had held a measure of kindness in them, (despite the King's often intimidating aura) Ansen's eyes sparkled darkly, with a ruthless intelligence.
"It's almost a pity to see you here Tanlin," Ansen said, not sounding sorry at all. "But I think we both know it would have wound up this way sooner or later. And who knows, maybe you'll come out of it alive and be useful for my purposes. I wouldn't lay long odds on that one however, considering your… unique background."
Tanlin was led over to a long twisting staircase that spiraled down into a deep, deep hole that went down for a very long way. Torches had been wedged into natural ledges carved into the rock of the pit along the way down and they flickered dimly in the gloom. Stones rattled over the lip of the hole as Tanlin fought being forced over to the place. They took a frighteningly long time to fall to the bottom and when they did thy hit with the plinking sound of a stone being dropped into water.
Because she was gagged, all she could do was glare back at the man who called himself king with false bravado. He might have the power of life and death over her right then, but she could at least die with her pride.
"Maybe you will live after all, no tears I see, so you certainly seem to have more spirit than many of the girls that came before you," he said in a musing tone, as though they were discussing nothing of greater importance than what he intended to eat for dinner that night.
"I suppose your spirit merits you one final courtesy," Ansen said as he reached behind her head and loosened the knot on the gag and allowed it to drop from her face.
Tanlin didn't waste her breath on screaming, instead she looked right back at the false king and said
"It doesn't matter how long you sit on that throne, one day our king will return! King Gyousou rules by the will of Heaven and no matter what you do, you cannot win against that. He'll find you, and he will stop you!"
Instead of being dismayed by her reminder that his time on the throne was limited, Ansen only looked back at her with amusement.
"You're not the first of your number to say such things to me, and really, it amuses me every time. I can never seem to get enough of the look on your courtesan faces when you see the truth."
"What truth is that?" Tanlin demanded, trying not to let her voice quaver.
"Here… let me show you."
Ansen spun on a heel and led her back away from the edge of the pit, out of the small side-cavern and down deeper along the main hall. He led her to another door and up a short flight of stairs, down through a small hall that twisted and turned in what looked like tunnels that had been carved by the hand of nature rather than by man, along the rock. There was another door with a great number of rocks in it. The door swung open into a vast, naturally carved stone cavern. The walls looked frosted with ice and snow, which was odd because the temperature didn't feel any different than any of the other caverns. The floor was rough and uneven with tall pillars of white stalagmite rock formations.
"Look closely," Ansen said, bringing a nearby torch to bear on the ice-like stalagmites jutting up from the ground.
The light shone through the crystal pillar, sparkling like sunlight through the icicles on the eaves of a house in wintertime.
"That is-!" Tanlin gasped in shock and dismay.
The crystal pillars that lined the walls and jutted up throughout most of the cavernous room held figures frozen into them, like leaves in the fall trapped in the ice of winter. They were figures that Tanlin, from her long familiarity with the court and ministry of the palace, recognized. They were all of the ministers and soldiers, military and government officials that had objected to Ansen's "temporary measures" in the beginning of the interregnum and had disappeared one by one over the last several years.
"That's minister Shensou, and Minister Li, and…" she said in horrified dismay as she touched the cool (but, oddly, not ice-cold) surface of the nearest pillar holding a face she recognized. Each of the figures frozen in the pillars wore chains, and looked asleep, but their frozen features lacked the grey pallor of death. They were still alive somehow.
"Are you surprised? Have you ever seen such a thing? I'll wager you haven't," Ansen said smugly. "The substance holds them in a deep, ageless sleep and is impermeable. One would have to have the right antidote to melt them from their prisons, and only I know the formula for the mixture. But come, I haven't shown you the, heh, crown jewel of my collection."
Tanlin was almost afraid to know what else this man might choose to show her, but followed him anyway, deeper into the cavern. She tried to ignore all of the faces of the people frozen in the… whatever it was, that surrounded her, a moment later she had something to take her mind off from her feelings of unease.
Ansen stopped her just at the outside of a ring made of white stones that circled around a stone dais placed in the exact center of the cave, and surround by what appeared to be five large stone boulders at even intervals.
:What kind of boulders would have chains surrounding them?: Tanlin wondered idly to herself then switched her attention to the other mystery in the room.
The dais placed before her did not hold any sort of artifact or great treasure, instead the entire surface of it was covered in sharp up-jutting spikes of metal. The tips were pointed and it even seemed like the edges of the spikes were sharpened with serrations.
:Why would anyone put up such an unusual arrangement?: she wondered to herself, not seeing anything that would cause Ansen to gloat, some rocks and a few spikes of metal sticking up out of the ground.
"Look up, courtesan," Ansen prompted.
Tanlin obediently did so, what she saw in the flickering torchlight made her heart sink to her toes. There was a great metal chain hanging from the vaulted ceiling of the cavern which soared many, many feet above her head. Dangling at the end of the chain was what looked like a series of intricate metal cages, one inside the other inside the other, and she could just see something glinting inside the very center cage, glittering in the air like sunlight through ice.
"As you can see, courtesan, my former twin general is the very least and last of my worries."
"Your majesty," she whispered in despair, certain that that had to be who hung there in the cage above the spikes.
"Even if someone managed to get past the guards posted in this place," Ansen added. "That chain is attached to a number of traps to take out anyone fool enough to try to rescue him. Even if they made it past the traps, there are still the cages to unlock, and a single mistake made in the unlocking them will cause the rescuer to be locked in with his prize. A few have made it that far…"
He gestured to a small pile of bones made into a macabre arrangement, like a child stacking wooden blocks.
"Even on the miraculous chance that they should some how manage to rescue him from out of this place… they'll never free him from the shell that contains him. The substance is as hard as stone, so any blow hard enough to shatter it would also shatter the person inside of it. That's assuming they could somehow manage to get to the king at all…"
At that moment one of the rock formations, or rather, what Tanlin had taken to be rock formations, suddenly moved. Unwinding itself from its curled up pose of rest, the "boulder" resolved itself into a form with a long, serpentine neck, a great triangular head sporting powerful jaws filled with sharp cruel fangs, enormous talons on the ends of powerful haunches and forelimbs gripped the stone, a hide of scales that were tougher than armor glittered in the torchlight and lastly there was a creak and snap as two great wings of leather, gleaming with a strangely beautiful iridescence in the light snapped out and beat at the air for a second before falling into place on its back. The creature looked out at her with soul-less hungry eyes, clearly debating with itself about the feasibility of her usefulness for a snack.
"Drakh!" she gasped in fear and alarm, backing away from it instinctively.
Even in the ranks of monstrous beasts there were youma and then there were youma. Most youma would only be large enough and fierce enough to handle two or three people at a time; certainly, they could cause damage, but with concentrated effort, planning and coordination, it was possible for a town guard to drive them off. Tanlin had only heard stories of the drakh, but they were a (thankfully rare) species of youma that made armies weep in despair. They were so large, and so fierce and so dangerous that it was said even the earth trembled at their onset. Drakh had hides that could not be pierced by weapons, it was said. They could change their forms, fly, and harness the power of the elements with their breath. According to legend, whole armies had been decimated by the attack of a single drakh.
:And here are five of them…: she thought in despair.
It would be impossible for anyone but a god in physical form to make it past that many drakh, they were simply to powerful.
"So as you can see, the rightful king is well-protected. Even if the kirin of Tai should ever manage to return and find his liege, Gyousou here will never be restored to the throne. The destiny of this kingdom is in my hands."
On that note, Tanlin was led out of the chamber and back down the hall to the fate that had awaited all of her sister courtesans, and now awaited her.
The pit at the bottom of the other cave didn't look any shallower the second time she saw it, and the narrow twisting stone stair she was all but shoved down onto seemed to go on forever as she descended down it. There was a small landing at the bottom surrounded on all sides by water. Torchlight flickered dimly in the gloom, a dense mist hovered over the surface of the water as Tanlin looked around her.
"Ah… my poor sisters!" she gasped in sorrow. "I fear that our kingdom may forever live outside the protection of the Emperor of Heaven. An immortal usurper sits upon the throne, whose status on the Registry can only be revoked by the King, and the King is sealed away in an ageless sleep that cannot be broken except by his usurper."
The man had covered every contingency, the army was his, the castle was his and even their great and fearless king was unable to strike at him. Taiki was still no-where to be found, and even if he were, the king was sealed away from him, he could not die and so the kirin could not even choose a new king. Tai was going to need a miracle.
The waters surrounding her started to ripple and lap at the edges of the small island she stood upon. What she had taken to be stone islands breaking the surface of the water, began to move with an unhurried deliberation all around her. Two wide, lambent pools of blue-green light gleamed in the night, shining dimly through the mists just over the surface of the water. The lights reared up over her, the form resolving into what Tanlin recognized (by descriptions from stories) as belonging to the legendary gorkuren "the ice-fire beast".
Its head wove from side to side, and Tanlin watched it with all the fascination of a mouse caught in the gaze of a snake. There was no point in even trying to run, the gorkuren, even if it were not faster than the winds in its home habitat, breathed the cleansing fire.
:Unfortunately, the miracle will not be held by me,: Tanlin thought.
The world around her faded to white light and her sad, sheltered life flickered out like the last candle in the dark.
A.N. Because this story is based off the anime, I had to take a few liberties with the storyline. When I started writing this fic I had not been able to find a copy of the book The Sky At Dawn which told of what happened next after the anime ended, the only thing I had to go on had been a short not-very-detailed synopsis posted on someone's blog that I'd found using Google. That post had listed the main bad guy's name as Ansen and not Asen. By the time I read Eugene Wood's wonderful translation I'd already written about fifteen chapters and didn't feel like changing it.
This particular chapter by the way is an insert/rewrite. I could never figure out how exactly to word what I wanted to put. It was only after I'd figured out how Ansen got away with holding an awesome guy like Gyousou Saku prisoner somehow (I couldn't imagine he would have been held prisoner, and amnesia would have been redundant) that I could figure out what to put in this chapter... which it sort of a weird way to go about writing it now that I think about it.
Reveiws are love... love me? Even a little? That's okay, I resigned myself to the fact that this is probably going to be the least popular thing I've ever written. It gets better, I promise.