Snow in the Year of the Dragon Read online

  SNOW IN THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON

  (Book 4 from

  The Rise of the Upper Kingdom)

  H. Leighton Dickson

  Copyright © 2018 H. Leighton Dickson

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1987564082

  ISBN-10: 1987564081

  OTHER BOOKS IN THE

  RISE OF THE UPPER KINGDOM

  SERIES

  Book 1; To Journey in the Year of the Tiger

  Book 2: To Walk in the Way of Lions

  Book 3: Songs in the Year of the Cat

  Book 4: Snow in the Year of the Dragon

  Prequels:

  Swallowtail & Sword: The Scholar’s Book of Story & Song

  DEDICATION

  To Readers of Infinite Patience

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank the Laughing Foxes (Jeannie, Donna, Susan, Graham, Alex, Emma, Tessa and Jodene, aka The SKULK) for the many evenings of spirited conversation and conversational spirits. To Donna White for her line/copy edits and to Craig MacDonald for the best writing house in the world on the shores of Lake Superior.

  Duty

  Lost Railya, Eastern Seaboard

  Land Without a Kingdom

  The Year of the Cat

  According to Kerris Wynegarde-Grey, there are dragons in the world.

  Dragons are the divine protectors of the Upper Kingdom and the ultimate symbol of Life and Fortune. Their celestial breath, or sheng chi, wards off evil spirits, protects the innocent and bestows safety to all. They show their power in the form of the seasons, bringing water from rain, warmth from sunshine, wind from the seas and soil from the Earth.

  Kerris Wynegarde-Grey knows this. Like him, dragons are elemental.

  There are wind dragons and water dragons, dragons of fire and dragons of ice. There are dragons that live deep in the earth, crush stone with their teeth and breathe sand like incense. According to Kerris, there are even metal dragons, although those are considerably more rare and are usually closely tied to Ancestors. That makes them dangerous, best to be avoided at all costs.

  Perhaps the most dangerous dragon, however, is not really a dragon at all. It is the Year of the Dragon. In a Dragon year there is no peace, said the Chi’Chen Emperor in a previous life, only fire. Dragon years are like the sea – violent and unpredictable with incessant waves of calamity, upheaval and change. Men may make their fortunes in the Year of the Dragon, and just as quickly lose them. And for those born in the Year of the Dragon (called Dragonborn), dragon years are often bad luck.

  Empress Thothloryn Parillaud Markova Wu was Dragonborn.

  Not many cats have seen a dragon. No dragon bones hang in museums, nor do their skins adorn temple walls. Dragons are wise, elusive and mysterious, understanding the ways of cats far better than cats do themselves. I believed they existed long before I met one simply because Kerris had told me. He knew where they lived and how to find them. Many people have learned from Kerris’ understanding of dragons, including the Ancestor Jeffery Solomon.

  “I wanna see a dragon,” said Solomon, nose pressed against the Griffen’s dirty glass.

  From the console, Damaris Ward looked over her shoulder.

  “There are no such thing as dragons, Seven.”

  “Kerris says they’re real,” said Solomon. “I believe him.”

  “Kerris has an active imagination.”

  “Kerris is a talking lion who controls lightning and trashed the entire CD compound with his mind,” Solomon grinned. “That’s a pretty active imagination.”

  Ward grunted and turned back to her controls and the physician let his eyes linger for a moment. Long of limb and elegant of profile, Damaris Ward was a security chief not given to flights of fancy, much less conversations about dragons. She was rarely without her goggled cap but now, wisps of dark hair flipped out from beneath it. She hated every lock, would shave it all in a heartbeat if given the chance. So very different than Pilar who’d gloried in her masses of wild, dark curls.

  Odd. He hadn’t thought of Pilar in ages. A lifetime.

  He sighed, turned his attention to the windows once again.

  It had been weeks since they had dropped Kerris and his very pregnant wife off at the Forbidden City of Bai’Zhin and since then, they had been piloting the Griffen southward, searching for traces of humanity. They had seen Chi’Chen fishing boats along the eastern coast and feline villages scattered across the Vietnam peninsula, but once they’d reached the New China Sea, it was like civilization of any sort had disappeared. Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia and New Guinea – lush, tropical, wild, and completely devoid of people.

  Clearly, the earth had flourished in their absence.

  Now along the beaches and rugged shores of eastern Australia, the Griffen soared low over the water, spray rising beneath the helijet’s curved wings.

  “It’s beautiful,” said Persis Sengupta as she too leaned against the glass. “The way the water moves against the land. Blue and white, blue and white. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

  “Waves,” said Solomon.

  “Waves,” she said and flashed him a tentative smile. She was a beauty with great dark eyes, high cheekbones and short hair slicked elegantly off her forehead. She was strapped into her jumpseat, body straining against the belts but hands pushing back into her chair. Conflicted, Solomon knew. A sheltered woman in a raw land. She stared out at the water, the smile still playing on her lips. “Yes, waves …”

  “It’s caused by the pull of the moon on the oceans,” said Armand Dell from the seat behind. He wasn’t wearing belts and he hadn’t taken his eyes off the coastline for hours. “And it’s actually eroding the shore with each wave.”

  “Well, if there are dragons in the water,” she muttered, “I hope the waves erode them too.”

  “There aren’t any dragons,” said Ward from the console.

  “I bet there are,” said Solomon. “Kerris said so.”

  “Seven is right, Jian,” said Dell. “Kerris isn’t a normal lion.”

  “Person,” corrected Solomon.

  Dell grinned. “You said lion first.”

  “I was being sarcastic. It used to be funny.”

  “You’re losing your touch,” grunted Ward.

  “Well, Kerris isn’t a normal lion or a normal person,” said Dell. “And he’s seen more of this world than we have. What if there are dragons?”

  “There aren’t,” said Ward.

  “But this is a new world,” said Dell. “The animals we had in the compound were either mutations or the results of old genetic manipulations. Who knows what’s out here now.”

  “Not dragons,” said Ward.

  “Either way, the gene pool’s a very different place than when we went under.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Sengupta said. “But I hate it. It’s too wild.”

  “Without people, life should be wild,” said Dell. “People try to tame the wild.”

  “I want to go back.”

  “You should have thought of that before you started talking to the animals,” said Ward.

  “People,” said Solomon. “She started talking to the people.”

  “I was doing my job,” Sengupta grumbled. “It wasn’t my fault we found an animal that could talk—”

  “Woman,” said Solomon.

  “And it wasn’t my fault that I could communicate with it.”

  “Her,” said Solomon.

  The linguist raised her chin.

  “And it certainly wasn’t my fault that Kerris trashed the compound. We could have still been there if he hadn’t trashed the compound.” She shrugged. “See? Wild.”

  “How did
he do that anyway?” said Solomon and he turned in his seat to study the zoologist. “Dell?”

  Dell looked up. He was beginning to grow scruff that might one day be called a beard but he was still young. It might take months for him to grow what Jeffery Solomon could grow overnight.

  “How did Kerris do any of that? People can’t control lightning. Animals can’t control lightning. How is it that the IAR splices a few genes and voila, some animal-person lion-guy can control lightning?”

  Dell blinked at him.

  “And Sireth – the one who saved me – I can still hear him in my head sometimes. And Sherah the witch, she could start a fire with her thoughts. You’re the zoologist. How can they do that?”

  “Maybe the IAR didn’t just splice genes,” said Dell. “Maybe they augmented them.”

  “But how?”

  He shrugged.

  “I remember scanning a plug once that said they were selecting for exceptional humans,” he said. “So they could modify the genes before mutagenesis.”

  “Exceptional?” Solomon frowned. “How so?”

  “I don’t know,” said Dell. “It was an old plug.”

  “You shouldn’t use old plugs, Armand,” said Sengupta. “They can corrode the wire and mess with your head.”

  “Explains a lot,” grinned Dell.

  “The IAR had no controls,” said Ward from the pilot’s seat. “No regulatory commissions, no governing bodies. I suspect the scientists overseeing each project could pretty much do whatever the hell they wanted.”

  Solomon shook his head, looked back out the window.

  “That doesn’t answer the question,” he said.

  “We may never know, Seven,” said Ward. “It’s a different world now.”

  “And we just have to learn where we fit in it,” he said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Oh look,” said Sengupta. “Pelicans.”

  They all pressed their noses to the glass.

  Below them were pelicans, flying low to the water in a perfect V. The birds had changed little despite the wars, plagues and mutations of centuries past. They were familiar, they were natural and to the scientists, they were a comforting sight.

  “I’ll get closer,” said Ward. She angled the stick and the Griffen dipped a wing. It was a quiet, solar-powered vehicle and soon, they were soaring alongside the flock. Solomon could almost feel the ocean spray on his face.

  “These are nice,” said Sengupta. “Pelicans are not terribly wild birds.”

  “I love to watch their wings,” said Dell. “Pure biomechanics in motion.”

  Solomon grinned again, remembering the time a young tigress drove a Humlander along the ruined roads of Turkey. That was not so much biomechanics in motion as an accident waiting to happen.

  “Is that our shadow?” asked Sengupta and she pointed. There was a dark shape under the water, moving as fast and mirroring the trajectory of the flock.

  “I don’t think so,” said Solomon. “Damaris…”

  “A whale!” Dell shouted. “It’s a whale! I’m sure of it!”

  Sengupta turned to look at him.

  “They still have whales?”

  “It’s all worth it then,” said Dell. “Some of us hoped that whales would survive, even if we didn’t.”

  The shape grew darker as if rising to the surface. Solomon frowned.

  “Damaris…”

  “Yuh, I’m going to get some altitude,” she said. “I don’t want to be knocked out of the sky by a breaching humpback.”

  “Wait, I want to see it,” said Dell.

  “I don’t,” said Sengupta. “He can stay in the water where he belongs.”

  Solomon leaned forward, pressed his forehead against the glass when suddenly, the shadow burst upwards with a great spray of water. Ward threw her weight onto the stick and the helijet banked steeply, sending both men out of their seats to the cabin deck. Solomon scrambled to his feet and, through the window he caught a glimpse of white water and grey skin, a huge gaping mouth and rows of dagger teeth. The body of a pelican struck the glass and the Griffen bucked again before the great creature crashed back to the water to disappear beneath the waves.

  “That was no whale,” muttered Ward.

  “What was it?” Sengupta cried. “What was it?”

  “Physeter macrocephalus?” Dell now. “Carcharodon carcharias? Both? Neither? An entirely new species? New Genus? New Family? New Order? I have no clue, Jian. It’s blown all my learning out the door.”

  Solomon peered at the skies above, the water below.

  “So…where are the pelicans?” he asked.

  “Where are the pelicans?” repeated Ward.

  Only a few feathers, floating on the waves.

  “It swallowed an entire flock of pelicans,” said Solomon.

  “Don’t talk about it,” said Sengupta. “I hate this place.”

  “It was like nothing I’ve seen in any of the archives,” said Dell. “Like a Physeter macrocephalus crossed with a Carcharodon carcharias, only bigger. Much bigger.”

  “What are you saying, Armand?”

  “You’re the linguist, Sengupta,” said Ward from the stick.

  Sengupta glared at her, dark eyes flashing.

  “Sperm whale and Great White Shark,” she snorted. “I know the terminology, Jian. But one’s a mammal and one’s a fish. You can’t splice those.”

  “Of course you can’t,” Dell said. “But you saw that! It’s just, well, it’s just…”

  “It’s been a long time,” said Ward. “Who knows what else the IAR was playing with?”

  “Dragons?” said Solomon.

  She swore at him.

  “Kalgoorlie isn’t on the water, right?” asked Sengupta.

  “It’s in the middle of the desert.”

  “Good.” And she sank back into her chair, wrapped her arms around her ribs.

  “Right,” said Ward. “Executive decision. Forget scanning Sydney or any of the other coastal cities. On to Kalgoorlie.”

  “On to Kalgoorlie,” echoed Solomon.

  The Griffen flew a little higher after that.

  ***

  Sandman 2,

  Marathon, Ontario, Canada

  Year of the Dragon

  A late spring storm had buried the Northern Ontario landscape once again in white. The snow was deep but the Sandmen were deeper.

  For as long as he’d been awake, Anthony Paolini hoped he’d get used to the snow. He was a New Mexican by birth but a Canadian by posting, and he’d hoped that somehow, sometime, the harsh landscape would feel like home. He hoped that the frosted pines and boney birches would work their craggy charm into his psyche, that the borealis would weave its dancing spell into his blood and that the rocky mesa-topped mountains would carve silhouettes of slate into his soul. He’d hoped in vain, for after so many years of struggling against the bitter cold and unforgiving elements, he had to admit he hated them still. But most of all, he hated the snow.

  He tapped his finger and thumb together, spreading the ionspace in front of him. The SmartALYK system was one of the few things that actually worked in SleepLab 2, and he swiped the screens back and forth, studying the data brought back by the drones. Information and images detailing an enemy more animal than human living in the ruins of cities like New Delhi and Beijing, Calcutta and Shanghai. In fact, if he didn’t look too closely, he would have sworn the animals were people moving about on two legs, wearing clothing, using other animals as livestock. He shook his head, cursed the IAR and their plagues. These creatures were the end result of an ideology without boundaries and science gone mad.

  It was dark in his office but he preferred it that way. Life underground was safer. Monsters lived on the surface with the cold and the snow.

  A ping, and the square, grey face of Celine Carr appeared on the screen. He wondered if he looked grey to her. Again, a product of life underground. Maybe they were all turning to snow.

  “Cece,” he said.

&n
bsp; “Tony.” Her voice was raspy and vaguely British. “Did you see the latest grids?”

  “Specifically?”

  “The NPM.”

  His eyes flicked back to one set of images, grateful there were no signs of the centre’s reinstatement. Like the Sandman bases, the NPM was still underground. Hopefully abandoned. There were signs of life above and around it, however, and that was a problem.

  “Your monsters are there,” he said.

  “I think we’re fine,” she grumbled. “They won’t have a clue what they’re living on. They’re not people.”

  “They move like people. They wear clothes like people. They ride horses like people. Your Jeffery Solomon says they’re people.”

  She was quiet for a moment, her eyes turning to pebbles, her thin lips tightening to form a perfect line.

  “Jeffery’s thinking is compromised.”

  “If the NPM goes operational, we may have no choice but to destroy it.”

  “I agree.”

  “That could start a war.”

  She snorted.

  “They’re a feudal kingdom, Tony,” she said. “They have swords and arrows and claws. We have Maidens. These creatures of Jeffery’s won’t stand a chance.”

  “So you don’t think they’re the remnants of the IAR?”

  “The by-products, yes. The descendants? Not a chance.”

  “Good. That makes it easier, then.”

  He paused.

  “Do you remember what it looked like?”

  “What? The NPM?”

  “Yuh.”

  She smiled, her eyes shining and small.

  “It was beautiful,” she said. “A marvel. I still don’t know how they built it.”

  “Oh, I remember. It was all about the novacem,” he said, tapping the image. It flickered under his finger. “They combined modular voltaicomb with aerogel glass—”

  “I wasn’t asking, Tony. I don’t care.”

  He grinned sadly.

  “Be a shame to destroy it.”

  “If we have to, we have to.”