Guardian of Heaven and Earth
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New Yogo
Part 4 - The Flood
Chapter 4 - Rainbow Palace
Shuga returned to Chagum’s tent after the war council and found him completely surrounded by soldiers. An ox-drawn cart was stopped just outside the tent. As Shuga passed it by, a young man lifted the cover over the cart’s window and called out, “Lord Shuga!”
The soldiers around the tent stood up straight, wary of intruders.
The young man left the cart and approached Shuga. “Lord Shuga, may I enter the tent as well?” He was slightly flushed and out of breath.
Shuga hadn’t recognized him at first, but this young man was Ruin, Crown Prince Chagum’s former attendant.
“Ruin?” Shuga asked. “Did you come here by cart? How did you know where we were?”
Ruin didn’t answer. Shuga gestured him into the tent. Ruin sucked in a breath. “Your Majesty!”
The Second Queen sat at Chagum’s bedside. She had been sickly for some years and hadn’t left the palace in a very long time, but now, she was here. She was supposed to be at the Mountain Palace, but she’d stayed behind after all the other nobles had fled.
Like the Mikado, it was forbidden for the Queens to travel abroad unattended and without permission, for fear that the outside world might sully their purity. No Second Queen in the history of New Yogo had ever visited an army camp before.
“What happened to my son?” The Second Queen asked hoarsely. She was wasted and thin, but the light of strong resolve and courage was in her eyes. In this state, Shuga thought that Chagum and his mother looked very much alike, though he’d never really noticed the resemblance before.
Two of the Second Queen’s attendants had accompanied her and were sitting quietly in a corner of the tent. Shuga sat seiza in front of the Second Queen and bowed his head deeply.
“He’ll be fine,” Shuga said. “His Majesty is merely sleeping. He fell into a deep sleep after over-exertion. The doctor has been to see him and give him medicine. He should be back to normal in a few days.”
“How long as he been asleep?” The Second Queen asked with a frown. “Sleeping for a more than a day can’t possibly be healthy, can it?”
“I am certain Crown Prince Chagum will be well enough to ride out and meet the Talsh,” Shuga said. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to battle.”
“I don’t want to lose my child again,” the Second Queen. “When he was a young child, I let him go with Balsa the spear-wielder to save his life. And she did, but when he came back, there was no one to protect him from other dangers. I don’t know how to protect him now.”
The Second Queen frowned. “After Chagum came back from the outside world, he…changed. No trace of the boy I knew was left in him. I wanted to see that boy again, more than anything.”
The Second Queen’s lips trembled. “He was happier outside the palace. It was unlucky, him being born inside it.”
The Second Queen stroked her son’s hair and wept over him, hands and shoulders shaking violently.
Chagum showed no reaction. He was still deeply asleep. His body was heavy and as cold as ice. He saw the face of the Talsh soldier whose throat he’d slit in his mind’s eye, vivid and bright as if it were illuminated by lightning.
There were corpses churning under his horse’s hooves. Blood sprayed across his face. The faces of dead men who had died far from home flashed before Chagum’s eyes. Behind it all, his father’s face swam behind his eyes. He wondered what his father would think of all this terrible carnage.
Chagum was so tired. He didn’t want to move; he felt like he couldn’t. He understood that he was having a nightmare, but he couldn’t force himself to wake up.
A short time later, Chagum awoke. It was as warm as summer and smelled like clean summer rain. When he opened his eyes, he was in Nayugu.
He breathed in the soothing scent of Nayugu’s water, feeling completely soothed. He had smelled so much death lately, but the water of Nayugu had washed him completely clean. He tried to move, but his body was still to heavy. When he tried again, a strange thing happened: his body split into two pieces.
It didn’t hurt. Both bodies appeared physically the same. Chagum realized that one body was his physical body in Sagu--that was the one that couldn’t move. His spiritual body in Nayugu could move. He floated lightly and easily in the lapis-lazuli colored water. He felt like he was swimming in the southern oceans with the pirate Senna again. The seaweed and plants on the ocean floor were as lush and green as a forest.
A mountain rose out of the ocean. The water was rougher near the surface. The water was so crystal clear that the sky was visible overhead.
Yona Ro Gai gathered around Chagum in great numbers, making a tinkling sound like bells as they glided smoothly through the water.
“Come,” one of the Yona Ro Gai said. They took Chagum’s hand and swam with him toward the north.
Chagum smelled something vaguely sweet. His heart skipped a beat when he recognized the smell. He had first encountered it in Saahnan, the Land of Feasting, long ago when he’d hosted the water spirit’s egg.
Spirits and Yona Ro Gai passed around him as closely as a school of fish. Chagum swam with them, the sweet scent growing stronger as he advanced further north. He expected to see the army camp or a battlefield, but the Yona Ro Gai were leading him somewhere else.
A deep basin like a crater spread out below Chagum. At the bottom of the basin there were two enormous empty shells. As he came closer, he noticed tiled roofs atop the shells, which appeared very odd. This must be a place in Nayugu that overlapped with Sagu.
“The Imperial Palace...”
He was looking down at the Imperial Palace of New Yogo. The two rounded shells took on some definition: he identified the placement of the Star Palace. Light from the spirits and the clear blue water shone off the shells, bathing the palace in rainbow colors.
Chagum remembered seeing this same shell palace once before. It had shone with all the colors of the rainbow, just like this. The sight reminded him of a memory that he thought he ’d forgotten.
When Chagum was very young, he got a high fever and went to bed early. When he awoke, he smelled the sweet scent of the water of Nayugu for the first time. A Yona Ro Gai took his hand and invited him into Nayugu ’s lapis-lazuli colored water.
He had seen the Imperial Palace in Nayugu then, just as it was now. The light grew brighter, splitting off into shafts of colored light that cut through the water and shone into the sky.
Spirits, fish and water creatures reacted to the light, swimming joyously and buoyantly in the bright water. There were so many of them, and they all appeared to be playing together.
One of the shafts of light split off and became concentrated into a ball not much larger than a grain of sand. The ball of light shot toward Chagum’s chest--
--and then Chagum saw fish fleeing from the deep basin, silver backs gleaming in the light of the rainbow palace.
I wonder why I forgot this place...
Everything had started here. The water spirit had laid its egg while he was still in the Imperial Palace, as a child. His entire life and destiny had changed after that moment.
The two shells in Nayugu had belonged to the water spirit before its death. When the new water spirit was born, the old one died, leaving only its shell behind.
The Yona Ro Gai retained their grip on Chagum’ s hand. It guided him inside one of the large shells. It was much brighter than Chagum had expected inside. The shell was full of holes, which was how the light got in. The bodies of the Yona Ro Gai--and his own--were reflected on the shell ’s shiny surface.
Chagum saw countless unhatched eggs on the sea floor. They were many different colors, shapes, and sizes. Nayugu’ s warm water drifted gently over the eggs. For the first time in ages, Chagum felt the strong desire to go home. His mother wasn’ t here.
Was there some lingering memory of the water spirit still inside him? Chagum felt like he’ d been born in two worlds: once in Nayugu, once in Sagu. There was no denying that the water spirit’s egg was definitely part of himself.
Chagum felt there was great power in this place: the power of death and rebirth. He felt like he was home, but he also felt like he should go home. Something within him was torn.
He couldn’t live in Nayugu. He’ d never tried it, but he was certain that his real life and home was in Sagu. He wanted to see his mother again.
All of the eggs below Chagum started to shake in the strengthening current. Chagum looked around in alarm. It was eerily silent, but the water still moved the eggs around. All of Nayugu ’s water was agitated. Chagum got the sense that something terrible was about to happen.
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