The Lamb and the Gray Battle

September 17, 2022

  "I see," Diyiren said, his back to the lawyer. He focused on calming his heartbeat.

The September sky was growing dark in Wales and he stared at it as if it might give him answers. The lawyer called him King Ao Guang, asked more questions that he couldn't be troubled with.

"Whatever Qizi wants," Diyiren said, calling Aoibh the Chinese word for wife. "Any means necessary."

Mr. Dethewaite bowed to him in an old-fashioned way common in China, then left His King.

Against the promise he made to himself, Diyiren sat down and wrote Aoibh a long letter, apologized, begged forgiveness, wrote reams about sympathy and condolences. It was a simple trick to connect to her energy and send the letter directly to the empty living room. Then he kissed a Chinese doll made in his mother's image and locked up his office. His room was on the second floor of the complex and he changed from his ornate black robes into a plain set of white. He checked himself in the mirror, adjusted his Tang Dynasty-style crown and headed to his son's room.

Nianzang jumped up. His father could never sneak up on anyone—the resounding heartbeat announced him everywhere he went—but his father often walked past his door without entering. From his ornate dresser, his father pulled out a stack of plain white robes.

Nianzang said, "What happened?"

Diyiren presented the stack of robes to him. "Bronagh an Mhor was found dead yesterday."

"Oh no! How is Mam?"

"Not well."

Nianzang pulled out a piece of paper, but Diyiren ripped it away from him.

As abrupt as the action was, Diyiren kept his voice level. "Dress first. We have duties. Then you may write your letter."

"Mam needs me now, Fuqin."

"Your mother is half a world away. A letter can wait."

Nianzang tore out of his father's grasp as if his father had physically touched him.

"You're a cold, unfeeling monster!"

Diyiren shifted his gaze to the heavens and held his breath before he said something he'd regret. He shoved the white robes at Nianzang again.

"The sooner you change, the sooner we can address the people, and then you can write to your mother."

"I want to write to her now."

"It's too bad I'm your father then, because the answer is no. Get dressed. BoBo, Laoshi, Djehuty, Sutekh, they're all waiting for us."

"It's your fault she's gone."

Nianzang picked up the incense burner by his bed and threw it at his father's head. He knocked the Tang Dynasty-style crown to the floor.

"I hate you!"

Diyiren seized his son by the throat. Being part Chinese black dragon, he had a natural gift for controlling water. Including water in the body. He sent his energy through his son's skin and churned up his blood. The fluids roiled and his skin vibrated. Nianzang's thin eyes opened so that he looked like a Western creature. He locked onto his father, onto the blank black eyes staring through him. Deep in the pupil, golden flecks floated. His father's lip was hard and Nianzang touched death, felt for the first time in his five-hundred and seventy-six years that he could die.

A slight twitch in Diyiren's eye.

His father tossed him aside and turned his back to him. He pulled his clawed hand up his sleeve. Once upon a time, this claw was covered in plain black scales, but Diyiren had practiced, could now make gold scrolls over his fist.

Diyiren tightened his lips, his gaze fixed on the golden crown on the floor. He swore he would never use that technique on his son. He batted his lashes until his vision cleared. His heart thundered. Demon bloods for hundreds of miles skittered in a panic.

Diyiren took the crown in his hands, breathed deeply and focused on slowing the thumps. Like his mother, Nianzang chose a soft mattress, rejected the hard slab his father slept on. Diyiren stepped across the floor, continued to measure his breaths, sat on the fluffy comforter. The prince rubbed his throat, the slashes from his father's claws already healed, but his kiss with death licked his skin.

Diyiren said, "Do you know how old I was the first time my mother did that to me?" One fluid motion, the crown was perched on the top of his head where it belonged.

Nianzang adjusted against the wall. Madame Long was murdered on his father's hundredth birthday. Demons, dragons especially, weren't fully formed at their first century. His father's bones would have still been soft and malleable. He was virtually impossible to injure at that age, but he was completely liquid energy too.

When Nianzang didn't answer, Diyiren said, "I was thirty-three years old."

Nianzang clapped a hand over his mouth.

Good. Diyiren didn't want to explain.

"You were just a baby," Nianzang yelped.

And now his son was going to make him explain exactly what he wanted to avoid.

He said, "My mother was trying to make me strong."

"Your bones would have been like gelatin, wet rice. Noodles."

"Thank you for the vivid comparisons."

"No amount of training would chain that," Nianzang screamed. "It was cruel!"

Diyiren patted a spot next to him on the bed.

"How can you be so cold about it?"

Lock it inside. If they know they can hurt you, they'll torture you until you beg. And then they'll laugh.

Nianzang became a waterfall of tears. He pressed his head into his father's shoulder, sobbed and wailed. His mother would have been proud of the glorious tantrum he was throwing. Slobber and mucous soaked his robe.

"Are you finished?" Diyiren teased.

Nianzang slapped his shoulder. "How can you joke about it?"

Diyiren straightened his back, folded his legs into the lotus meditation position and closed his eyes.

Nianzang snorted. Of course, that was his father's answer for everything.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Diyiren relaxed, considered before saying, "It was a long time ago. It doesn't matter."

"It does to me. It would to Mam too."

"I told your mother."

"I don't believe you."

"She sobbed and begged. Why didn't I come for her? She prayed for years that I would rescue her, take her back to our Fortress, besought a god I don't believe in, that she doesn't believe in either, that I would come save her. My answer was that my mother threatened to kill me."

Nianzang said, "When you say it like that, all matter-of-fact, yeah, it sounds like you abandoned her."

"It was hard for me to talk about then."

It was still hard for him to talk about. The depth of his grief was incomprehensible to him. He pulled his son to his chest, feathered his hair, kissed his crown. Nianzang batted at him.

"Are you going to be all gooey and gross now?"

"Yes," he said, kissing him again.

Diyiren leaned back on the bed, enjoyed the soft mattress, the cushions and pillows. He spoiled his son with every luxury available.

"Have I ever told you about the first time I saw your mother?"

"No. You never talk about Mam. But BoBo told me. You were there when she was born."

"Now who sounds all matter-of-fact?"

But Diyiren was reflecting. It had been almost seven hundred years ago.