A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

Twentieth Day of the Tenth Month 293 AC

Mei Lin clasped her hands together to hide the shaking inside the long silk sleeves of her grown. It had been a long time since she had to do that, a lifetime since she had entered the palace at the age of thirteen as a court maid. No one had cared one whit about her beauty then, only that she was skilled with the calligraphy brush, young and nimble. Everyone had expected that she would be allowed to leave twelve years later after the Emperor's eye had passed her by without a second glance. It was what her mother had told her to quiet her when the eunuchs had taken her away.

Now mother was dead these past six years, something I would not even know the hour of or the place where her bones lay, but for my little dragonflies, she thought. The lesser ladies of the court swarmed to her in the hopes that they might catch the eye of the sovereign, but as she observed herself in the tall silvered mirror the young imperial consort never felt more like a fraud beneath the layered braiding and golden adornments.

Chains of whispers followed her down the halls, drowning out even the sound of leather soles on polished teak. How brazen she had been not only to pass a message to the Son of Heaven through one of her ladies newly wed to him as changzai, Lingering, but the absurdity of pride that she had asked for his company, summoned the emperor to her. The notion would have been enough to see even an empress fall from grace, much less a mere consort whose greatest distinguishing feature was binding steel in her hair.

Or at least my only public distinction... a touch of confidence reentered her stride as she recalled in the privacy of her own mind the reason why the Emperor had been paying so much attention to her of late. The assassin's eyes staring and mad... empty as he rushed through window, the ornate wood of the bed digging into her back and blood slick on her hands. The whole incident was hidden, of course, for the notion that the Emperor would need protecting by a woman even for an instant before the other guards burst in would be a dreadful blow to his prestige. Those whose lapse in judgement had allowed the assassination had all escaped dishonor in death, though some of them may have been helped along and in their place other eunuchs rose... eunuchs like Kai Gang Ru.

More than once she had asked herself if it had all been planned, worrying herself into sleeplessness staring up at the uncaring stars. The Son of Heaven was guarded by the Four Winds and the Three Luminaries. That was a truth... yet it was 'truth' that the Emperor's prayers brought the rains. Yet there had to be some reason the demon-binder had placed a spy to watch her and did not simply bind them to the one he most wished to keep under his eye.

It did not matter in the end, here too she had been set upon a path not of her making when the foreign sorcerers had shown the serpent to her and then disposed of it, having returned to the palace absent the spy the consort had no choice but to play whatever game the golden-haired woman had planned. It was easier to be bold in the moment when life and death hung upon a single thread then to walk calmly into peril Mei Lin found, she was bold just the same.

Passing through the carved wooden gate adorned with wind chines worked into the shapes of birds that chirped just as sweetly Mei Lin ignored the eunuch swallowing nervously as he inscribed her name upon a scroll, a record kept to account for any pregnancy that may arise from this evening's meeting. She doubted the Son of Heaven would care for that by the time the meeting was over were she as beautiful as the Maiden Made of Light. Turning to face the west wing, from whence the Emperor was most likely to emerge, she waited, her fingers unknowingly crumpling the letter she had been given.

The door to the north creaked softly causing Mei Lin to whirl about so swiftly she almost became tangled in her own robes. It was neither demon nor assassin, but the Emperor himself in plain blue silk, plain by the standards of the Imperial wardrobe at least, adorned with golden phoenixes and dragons he liked to bear for less ceremonial occasions, the symbols of rebirth and wisdom.

Unprompted Mei Lin rose to her feet and unable to find any way to soften the blow of the news she bore explained everything, words bursting from her lips like water from a broken dam. It was only when all the tale had been told, including naming Kai Gang Ru a pig that feasts upon his own excrement, that Lin realized she had not even greeted the Emperor in her haste. Yet when she scrambled to do so he waved the matter away. "Never mind that, it seems you have again come to save me from a peril greater than steel. Give me the letter..."

"Your Majesty, I..." the young consort objected to the dismissal of her duties even as she hastened to hand the sealed message over.

"If it sets your mind at ease, you can greet me twice when next we meet in private," the Emperor replied, the grim expression he had borne since he had begun speaking lightening into a smile for the first time.

Lin could not help herself, she giggled at the sheer absurdity of the image that conjured in the mind.

"With regret, Your Imperial Majesty, I must inform you that there will not be another meeting," a soft voice called out from behind them as Kai Gang Ru stepped through the door Mei Lin had walked through. At his belt was the scroll of the 'young eunuch' she had seen entering. "You see, it will tragically transpire that the false and treacherous northern consort has only been biding her time to strike at you, the previous foiled assassination nothing but a deception to make you lower your guard so she could strike at you with her foul magics. Of course, even as you succumb to foul poison your 'divine' nature will allow you to slay her." By the end of his proclamation the smile on the eunuch's face could have belonged on one of his demons.

While the traitor had been speaking the Emperor was silent, walking slowly towards Lin. It was only once he had reached her and taker the hand that was not currently holding a dagger that he turned towards Kai Gang Ru, his words as ice and steel. "What a carefully crafted story you have there, perhaps you should have become an actor amd not a sorcerer, certainly you would have lived longer doing it."

The sorcerer gave no answer but a spell that tore at the air and a veil of black fire falling.

The ring upon the emperor's hand burned gold, the world twisted, and before the flames could touch them they were elsewhere, the peach scented air of the Palace of Spring replaced with a musty smell Mei Lin could not name. Looking around she saw that the magic or miracle had brought them into a narrow windowless chamber barely twenty feet across, featureless save for a ancient lantern turned green with age that was somehow lit as though awaiting them and a small bronze gong at the center that shone brighter than gold.

Without letting go of her hand the Emperor struck the gong with the same ring that had shone so brightly a moment before. Mei Lin could feel the sound of it in her bones. A summons, she knew, though not of what or whom.

Seeing the question in her eyes the Emperor said simply. "It is not only demons and those who prostrate before them than can wield powers beyond mortality. By the morrow both of us will see the traitor's pyre and after that... I will find a way to speak to these foreigners who have so seriously warned us."

Greatly daring, for what was this if not a day for such acts, Lin asked: "Could they not aid in the hunt? Demons are a concern for all who live between earth and sky, no matter how strange their manner."

"The pride of the Luminaries will be bent by such a command, though perhaps that is not altogether a bad thing..." the Emperor mused.

OOC: I spent way too long looking for research, this time on the rituals of the Chinese court. I did not find much, though I did find more about how the imperial harem was formed and its various rankings so it wasn't all wasted.