We ripped the medallions from around our necks and hurled them as hard as we could toward the invisible soldiers. Then we took off again with Quan in the lead. A full moon emerged from behind a mass of clouds to illuminate our path. We could see the rough ground, the patches of tall brittle grasses, all limned in silver. The moonlight meant we could run faster without stumbling, but it also meant the emperor’s soldiers could spot us more easily.
A voice shouted behind us. I felt the sting of magic. Quan immediately angled toward the northeast, toward a great black shadow on the ground that swayed back and forth. Trees.
We dived into the forest. The thick tang of red pine masked our scent. The thorny underbrush meant we had to creep as slow as worms, unsnagging our clothes from the thorns, testing before we set any weight upon a hand or knee so we didn’t give away our position. Quan led us lengthwise through the thicket to a dried up streambed, and motioned for us to drop one by one into its not-so-comforting depths.
Once down, we jogged, doubled-over, until the ground rose to meet the plains again. Quan motioned for us to stop. I fell to my knees, gasping. Ai-ai. Surely the soldiers would overtake us. Then Yún leaned against me—just a moment, but enough that my courage flickered high.
“Now what?” Lian asked.
Quan stared ahead, across the gray-lit fields and open plains. “There,” he said. “More trees.”
I squinted. Moonlight flickered over the open ground ahead of us. Then I saw the feathery outline of Quan’s trees. The breeze carried the scent of pine toward us. It would cover ours from the trackers, but what about the mages?
(We can’t play hide-and-seek all the way to the mountains.)
A thundering of hooves yanked my heart into my throat.
“Run!” Quan said.
Yún gripped my hand and hauled me to my feet. Lian and Quan reached toward each other. One kiss and they scrambled over the rise and to their feet. Yún and I followed a heartbeat later, pelting toward that small speck of shelter. We can’t make it, I thought. It was over a li to the trees. The soldiers would cut us down long before we reached them.
And then . . .
Light exploded in our faces. Something small and feathered struck my chest. I lost my hold of Yún’s hand and tumbled backward. Blinded, I tried to fend off whatever monsters had attacked us. Claws and beaks snatched at my hands. I felt like I was wrestling with a bundle of wind. Someone was shouting—Yún. I wanted to tell her to shut up, remember the soldiers, when my vision cleared.
I froze.
The griffin sat on my chest, its flat black eyes two inches from mine.
“Yao-guài?” I whispered.
Kai! Kai, wake up!
I knew that voice.
Chen?
A loud grunt echoed inside my head. A wonderful stink of piggy odor rolled over me. Of course it’s me, said a familiar voice. Wake up. We don’t have much time.
I shook my head and looked around for my friends. Saw Yún with eyes rounded with amazement. Saw Lian rapt in some secret conversation. Faintly, as though veiled by the layers of worlds, came the flicker of a tall thin crane, a sharp-toothed fox, a blaze-bright creature that I recognized as a phoenix. (Quan? A phoenix?)
Oh, but what stopped my heart was the sight of a smoke-gray mountain cat, her tail switching around in barely contained impatience. The cat spun around and glared directly into my eyes, her own like pale moons on a spring night.
Nuó? I whispered.
My mother’s companion spirit gave me a familiar snarl. I winced and shrank into myself.
Meanwhile, Chen was nattering in my ear. We were trapped in the spirit plane, he said. The emperor’s doing. Nuó freed us. That horrible griffin led us to you.
You’ve wasted enough time, Nuó growled. We must take them through the gates.
What gates? I shouted.
The gates to the spirit roads, Yún whispered. Qi told me.
I had no chance to demand any answers. My stomach did a hideous hop-skip. Something strange stuck claws into my brain, or at least that’s what it felt like. My eyelids fluttered open, but the sight was too horrible to bear—a gulf of inhuman proportions opened below my feet, lit by fire. I clamped my mouth shut at the stink of sulfur and a strong metallic scent that reminded me of magic and blood and intense fear.
A hand pressed over mine. Yún. I knew that shape, that exact degree of warmth. My panic eased to a more bearable level.