Page 52 of Forest of a Thousand Lanterns

She rose, collecting the incense, an unlit lantern, and a few sulfur matchsticks in her sack. After consideration, she included her mother’s jeweled dagger and amber hairpin—they would be safer hidden underground—and crept out into the night. The Empress’s rooms were guarded night and day, but her ladies-in-waiting shared a separate entrance to their own chambers, to ease their coming and going to the shrine and bathhouses without disturbing Her Majesty’s rest.

Xifeng retraced her steps to the garden with ease, undetected. She struck a matchstick against the wall, applying the flame to her lantern. It illuminated thick grasses heavy with rain, almost obscuring the hole in the ground and the stone floor some twenty feet below. The palace gardeners never bothered pruning this corner, as Empress Lihua preferred a touch of nature in the otherwise meticulous landscape, and the hole had been left undisturbed. Xifeng hadn’t noticed before how irregular the stones in the wall were, some jutting out enough that she might be able to climb back out of the tunnel with the help of the surrounding shrubs. It would have to do, or she would be forced to climb up to the main passageway again and think of another excuse for getting past the tunnel guards.

She jumped into the hole with her sack and lantern hugged to herbody. With each step she took toward the hot springs, the creature grew more awake inside her. She felt a movement like fangs emerging, but through the fear she felt comfort, too, in something familiar.

The lantern light gave the cavern an ancient air, an aura of mysticism, and Xifeng felt at once she had done right to come. If she could find answers anywhere, it would be here.

She approached the strange waterfall, still unnerved by how clearly she could see her reflection in the sheets of fast-moving water. Striking another matchstick, she lit the incense. Within seconds, the powerful scent snaked into her nostrils. It was almost like being back in Guma’s sanctuary, with the door shut and all the world’s secrets laid bare.

Xifeng knelt beside the gurgling water and closed her eyes, letting the smoke surround her. She had once hated this thick, cloying fragrance, but when it mingled with the steam of the water, it became something alluring, irresistible. She gave herself up to it, taking it in.

Fairest,said the voice within, and she opened her eyes.

Though she was on her knees, her reflection in the waterfall was standing, strong and proud with shoulders flung back. On her imperious head, above the black silk-spill of her hair, she wore a pointed crown of sharp, lethal steel. All around her, the shapes of men huddled in surrender, and her eyes glittered in a face white as the moon, white as snow, gleaming like a blossom in the tree of a thousand lanterns. Over her chest, where the creature nestled, was the outline of a phoenix with a tail licked by fire—the symbol of the Empress of Feng Lu.

Fairest of all.

A breeze blew from some unseen crevice, pushing away the threads of incense, and for one moment Xifeng felt overpoweringly afraid. Where was she?Whowas she? And then the plumes of smoke overtook her once more and dashed her terror and confusion away.

“Guma,” she commanded, her eyes on her crowned reflection. It transformed into an unsettlingly familiar image: a sea of grass crashing against a cave and a slithering, too-tall man, facing a girl who looked like Guma. He flicked the cards of fortune at her and she caught them in delight, turning them into other objects: a snakeskin, a jeweled dagger, a gilded book of poetry.

The man held out his hand—for the objects or for something else—and the girl ran away. The image changed to show a nobleman bending over the hand of a pretty girl while young Guma watched in a rage of jealousy. Xifeng watched in bewilderment as Guma returned to the cave, her hands outstretched, imploring.

The waterfall shifted back to the crowned Xifeng, with a figure at her feet resembling Lady Sun. In her chest, the woman’s heart glowed like the moon, or a precious red apple.

“Is she the Fool?” Xifeng called, pulse thundering.

Instantly, the vision shifted into the card: a youth gazing at the stars, one step away from brutal death.

Memories swirled in her mind: lying awake at night, too hungry to sleep; Guma hunching over her embroidery; Wei turning away from the shoes he needed but could not afford. And then: Xifeng herself, crouching, skin weeping beneath the cracking whip, Lady Sun flushed with triumph. Everything she had endured to get here. All of the suffering and hope and pain.

“I have not come this far to fail,” she said through gritted teeth, balling her hands into fists. This could be confirmation from the spirits of magic... They could be telling her that Lady Sun was the enemy who would vanquish her.

There is only one way to make certain,the voice rasped.

A glint of light caught her eye in the blanket of fog around her. Shesaw the dagger that had belonged to her mother: hilt and sheath of burnished bronze, inlaid with kingfisher feathers and slivers of deep green jade. In the mirror-water, the dagger’s painfully sharp tip hovered inches above Lady Sun’s heart.

Be the blade and the edge together, the light and the dark. You have two faces, Xifeng.

She felt sick to her stomach, the way she had when Guma had thrust the first squirrel into her hands years ago. “This is a woman,” she protested, utterly repulsed, but the memory of the rabbits returned. Her first kill away from Guma. How their slippery hearts had scorched her throat, how the hot metallic tang of blood had given way to a roar of satisfaction that shook her whole being. The hunger came back, primal and potent, nearly overcoming her disgust.

Another breeze dispelled the smoke and she backed away from the dagger’s deadly shine. “Blood has a price. It is not worth my soul.” She spoke thetengaruqueen’s words with all the conviction she could muster.

The billowing, purple-black smoke expanded and wrapped its gossamer arms around her. It reminded her of the Empress’s silvery robe. Destroying Lady Sun wouldn’t only be revenge for herself and Kang, but also a favor, a gesture of loyalty to Empress Lihua, who might come to love her like a mother.

Xifeng panicked. If Guma truly was there, she may have heard that thought. But there was no betrayed reproach in the humming that grew louder in her ears. The smoke turned into a thousand forked tongues before her eyes, emerging from fanged mouths.

You know what to do. It’s only a matter of choosing to do it. It’s her death... or yours.

“Therehasto be another way,” she cried into the darkness. “I will find another way.”

There is only one choice.

“No!”

Falling, crying, screaming, she pushed through the tongues of smoke and stumbled toward the incense. She flung the burning sticks into the springs and ran in terror back to her bed, safe above in the city of women. But when she fell at last into an exhausted, dreamless slumber, a voice still lingered at the edge of her consciousness...There is only one choice.

And even after she awoke, it remained in the deepest shadows of her mind.

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