The Poppy War (The Poppy War #1) - R. F. Kuang Page 0,169
smoke. He didn’t look like a human so much as he did a simple vessel for the fumes, an inanimate extension of the pipe.
“It doesn’t stop hurting,” he said.
She sucked in another deep breath of the wonderful sweetness.
“I understand now,” she said.
“Do you?”
“I’m sorry about before.”
Her words were vague, but Altan seemed to know what she meant. He took the pipe back from her and inhaled again, and that was acknowledgment enough.
It was a long while before he spoke again.
“I am about to do something terrible,” he said. “And you will have a choice. You can choose to come with me to the prison under the stone. I believe you know what I intend to do there.”
“Yes.” She knew, without asking, what was imprisoned in the Chuluu Korikh.
Unnatural criminals, who have committed unnatural crimes.
If she went with him, she would help him to unleash monsters. Monsters worse than the chimei. Monsters worse than anything in the Emperor’s Menagerie—because these monsters were not beasts, mindless things that could be leashed and controlled, but warriors. Shamans. The gods walking in humans, with no regard for the mortal world.
“Or you can stay in Golyn Niis. You can fight with the remnants of the Nikara army and you can try to win this war without the help of the gods. You can remain Jiang’s good girl, you can heed his warnings, and you can shy away from the power that you know you have.” He extended his hand to her. “But I need your help. I need another Speerly.”
She glanced down at his slender brown fingers.
If she helped him free this army, would that make her a monster? Would they be guilty of everything Chaghan had accused them of?
Perhaps. But what else did they have to lose? The invaders who had already pumped her country full of opium and left it to rot had returned to finish the job.
She reached for his hand, curled her fingers around his. The sensation of his skin under hers was a feeling unlike anything she had dared to imagine. Alone in the library, with only the ancient scrolls of Old Nikan to bear witness, she pledged her allegiance.
“I’m with you,” she said.
Chapter 23
The Chuluu Korikh
From The Seejin Classification of Deities, compiled in the Annals of the Red Emperor, recorded by Vachir Mogoi, High Historian of Sinegard
Long before the days of the Red Emperor, this country was not yet a great empire, but a sparse land populated by a small scattering of tribes. These tribesmen were horse-riding nomads from the north, who had been cast out of the Hinterlands by the hordes of the great khan. Now they struggled to survive in this strange, warm land.
They were ignorant of many things: the cycles of the rain, the tides of the Murui River, the variations of soil. They knew not how to plow the land or to sow seeds so they could grow food instead of hunt for it. They needed guidance. They needed the gods.
But the deities of the Pantheon were yet reluctant to grant their aid to mankind.
“Men are selfish and petty,” argued Erlang Shen, Grand Marshal of the Heavenly Forces. “Their life spans are so short that they give no thought to the future of the land. If we lend them aid, they will drain this earth and squabble among themselves. There will be no peace.”
“But they are suffering now.” Erlang Shen’s twin sister, the beautiful Sanshengmu, led the opposing faction. “We have the power to help them. Why do we withhold it?”
“You are blind, sister,” said Erlang Shen. “You think too highly of mortals. They give nothing to the universe, and the universe owes them nothing in return. If they cannot survive, then let them die.”
He issued a heavenly order forbidding any entity in the Pantheon from interfering with mortal matters. But Sanshengmu, always the gentler of the two, was convinced that her brother was too quick to judge mankind. She hatched a plan to descend to Earth in secret, in hopes of proving to the Pantheon that men were worthy of help from the gods. However, Erlang Shen was alerted to Sanshengmu’s plot at the last moment, and he gave chase. In her haste to escape from her brother, Sanshengmu landed badly on Earth.
She lay on the road for three days. Her mortal guise was of a woman of uncommon beauty. In those times, that was a dangerous thing to be.
The first man who found her, a soldier, raped her and left her for dead.