Stepping backwards, pulling the magnet away from the Tao Tei, he looked around at his audience and indicated the white, carefully measured lines beneath his feet.
“The markings on the floor,” he said importantly, “will measure the distance from the beast at which it begins to demonstr—”
He was still looking at his audience when the Tao Tei’s eyes blazed, its head snapped up and it launched itself with a bellowing roar at Shen. It slammed into the bars of the cage with such force that the entire construction toppled over. Shen turned in utter terror and let loose a shrill scream—and then the heavy cage smashed down on top of him! The pole with its attached magnet flew out of his hand and went slithering away across the polished floor, out of reach.
Although the Tao Tei had not actually broken out of its cage, people began to scream, to panic, to run in all directions. Inside the cage the Tao Tei opened its vast mouth and expelled shriek after bellowing shriek. Shen, on his back, the lower half of his body crushed, found himself looking up at the glass ceiling. But he was already so delirious with pain that when the ceiling began to shatter, when the glass began to rain down in glittering shards, he wondered if it was real.
Through the valleys, across the desert plains, up and down the peaks and troughs of the mountain ranges, came the Tao Tei horde. There were thousands of them, massed together, moving as one. They formed a seething green ocean of teeth and talons, which flowed ever forward at incredible speed, flooding the land, stopping for nothing. Anything that got in their way—any animal, any roaming tribes, any bands of brigands or groups of merchants—were instantly overwhelmed and devoured. Nothing was left.
At the center of this raging sea, this teeming crush of Tao Tei soldiers, was the Queen, surrounded and protected by her Paladins. Her skin rippled with the thousands of eggs she carried. Yet her young didn’t slow her down. If anything, they made her more frantic to feed, to procreate, to flood the world with more of her kind.
Suddenly, however, she stopped. And as she did so, as though at an unspoken command, so did the green wave of creatures. She raised her vast head, opened her mouth wide and from it extended a surprisingly fragile and flexible receptor. She could hear something, taste something. It was one of her own. And it was calling to her. Informing her of the feeding ground it had discovered, inviting her to the feast. She felt excitement flooding her, felt her salivary juices flowing in anticipation. A scream erupted from her, high-pitched, ululating, causing fat veins to pulse and bulge all over her bloated body.
Then—a moment of silence as the horde took on new information.
They turned, as one, and began to flow in a new direction.
Towards Bianliang. Towards the feast.
21
The rain of glass had stopped falling. Some of it had landed on Shen—a shard of it had sliced through his cheek—but he barely noticed. He barely noticed the screaming, running crowd either, the crush of people at the door of the Main Hall, trying to get out. All he was really aware of was the overwhelming agony coursing in waves through his body, and the Tao Tei above him, in its toppled cage, still shrieking and hurling itself again and again at the bars.
The bars were buckling now, bending. Soon the creature would be free. Soon the wild beast he had foolishly brought here would break out and rampage through the Imperial Palace, and then the city, ripping people apart with its hooked black talons, crunching them in its vast jaws. It might even kill and eat the Emperor. Shen might become known not as the man who had tamed the Tao Tei, but as one who had brought a scourge of death and destruction to the Kingdom. He would be dishonored, reviled. Before he died, therefore—for he would die, he knew that, and very soon—he must do all he could to redeem himself.
Ignoring the black talons of the creature, which were slashing through the bars of the cage, inches above his body, in an attempt to rip him apart, he craned his neck, trying to look around and above him. The movement sent jagged bolts of new agony through his shattered legs, but he ignored them, blinking away the fug of unconsciousness that threatened to overwhelm him.
There on the floor, just above his right shoulder, he saw the base of the lacquered pole. He stretched his hand up towards it, screaming at the pain it caused him in his stomach and pelvis—so much pain that for a second he thought the black talons of the Tao Tei had reached him and torn him open. He kept screaming as his rapidly numbing fingers gripped the base of the pole and began to drag it, inch by inch, towards him.
Vaguely he was aware of a wrenching sound, and then a heavy metallic clatter. He knew instinctively what it was: one of the bars of the cage had given away—the Tao Tei was breaking loose! But there was nothing he could do except keep on with what he was doing. His fingers continued to climb the pole, dragging it down, bit by bit. With pain coursing through him, and the fingers of his hand moving sluggishly, like the legs of a dying spider, the task seemed impossible, insurmountable. He felt darkness closing in on him now, seeping from all sides. But he kept on. Inch by inch. Bit by bit.
And finally, impossibly, his fingers were clutching the top of the pole, finding the hook, the thread of the noose to which the magnet was attached. And here was the magnet! He could feel its cold, hard surface, even though the feeling was going from his hands. He gripped it, dragged it down towards the cage…
And the Tao Tei fell silent. Its eyes glazed, it stopped throwing itself about the mangled cage, it slumped as though drugged against the bars. It became utterly docile once more.
And Shen, feeling exonerated, smiled.
He closed his eyes and allowed the blackness to flood in and take him.
There were maybe only fifty balloons now left in the flotilla. But the survivors, spread out over several miles, powered on, a stiff wind pushing them quickly south.
There had been great excitement an hour ago, just as a pale pink dawn began to break on the horizon, when the green wave of Tao Tei, barreling towards Bianliang, was spotted in the distance. Slowly but surely the flotilla had been gaining on the creatures ever since, and were now almost directly above them.
More alarming, though, was the fact that as the dawn sun rose, awakening the land, it had also begun to glint on the glittering spires of Bianliang. It now seemed to be a race to see who could reach the city first—the Nameless Order or the Tao Tei. With a favorable wind the Nameless Order—or those that were left, at any rate—might just do it. But it was going to be close.
On the other hand, it might not even come to that, because one thing which had encouraged Wang, and which he had pointed out to William and Peng Yong, was that the Tao Tei appeared to be veering slightly off course. Unless they corrected themselves there was a chance they might bypass the city altogether. If that happened, and the creatures ended up in the open plains, it might then be a case of bombarding them from the air with black powder weapons. The Nameless Order had lost so many balloons, and might yet lose more, that Wang didn’t know whether they would have anywhere near enough firepower to wipe the Tao Tei out completely. But they might severely weaken them. And if they could score a direct hit on the Queen…
His musings were broken by Peng Yong, who was working the ropes. “They’re turning! Look!”
Wang, who had been resting, leaped to his feet. He looked over the side of the gondola, and saw that what Peng Yong had said was true. The Tao Tei were indeed turning—and were now once more heading directly towards Bianliang. It had perhaps been too much to hope that they would miss the city entirely, but even so, he couldn’t help feeling disappointed.