Lan pushed herself to her feet, slapping away the hand Dilaya tried to offer her. In an extension of the same motion, she whipped out her own blade. That Which Cuts Stars glinted like a tooth. “If you’re going to help me, let’s go. If not, get out of my way.”
Dilaya’s expression was incredulous. “Little fox spirit, you think you can beat me with that toothpick?”
“Less useless words, more action, Horse-face.” In one swift motion, Lan sheathed her blade. “Try to keep up.”
Dilaya’s angry response was lost to the roar of wind in her ears as Lan kicked off, qì propelling her into the storm-tossed night. The pulse of energies from ahead had stabilized, yet each step closer pounded dread through her bones. The image of that grandmaster who had bound his soul to a demon’s pulsed before her.
The circle of mountains drew closer, and she could feelthat whatever it was she was looking for lay just beyond. In its center: a vortex of darkness and yin qì. Its surface was dull, and as Lan descended, she had the feeling the last strands of light filtering from behind clouds were being sucked into it.
She hesitated before she took the final step forward, tipping her face to the sky. It was no use: the clouds had obscured the stars, and her memory was not good enough to memorize the star maps. Yet the throb of energies had grown stronger, like a low, eerie drum vibrating through the sternum of her ribs, rattling her teeth and bones with the yin it carried.
This had to be the work of a Demon God.
Lan leapt, ocarina clutched in one hand and That Which Cuts Stars in the other. It wasn’t until she landed on fine sand that she realized the black mass before her was a lake. Its waves roiled against the shores like the maw of a great beast, angry, violent, reaching.
A footfall sounded behind her as Dilaya landed. They stood together, watching the water claw at the land.
“You feel that, don’t you?” For once, Dilaya’s voice was low with something like dread. “Those yin energies. There is a reason we speak of balance in practitioning, of using yin and yáng in harmony. It is impossible for one’s soul to defend against so much yin for long. Over time, one will become corrupted.”
Again, Lan thought of the grandmaster of the School of Guarded Fists. Something in her chest knotted.
Before them, the water quieted with a stillness that sent goosebumps up Lan’s arms.
“Dilaya,” she said. “You should get out of here. Go somewhere safe.”
It spoke to the gravity of the situation that the other girl did not argue, only hesitated. Then there was a brush of wind and she was gone.
Lan walked up to the edge where water met earth. Shesuddenly realized how unnaturally silent it was here: no chirps of cicadas, no rustling of small animals scurrying through the underbrush, no coos of birds in the branches. It was as though all life had fled from this place.
All…but for one.
“Zen.” Her lips barely moved; she knew by some strange instinct that he would hear it.
A shadow stirred behind her, and when she turned, he was there: him, but not quite him, the boy she knew and then the shape of him lined in darkness. A blink and that darkness disappeared, as though her vision had blurred for a moment before snapping back into place.
Zen stood before her, black páo billowing in the slight breeze. The drumbeat of terrible yin energies had vanished, the stillness gone without a trace as the lake waters rippled, the pines around them swayed, the clouds above them shifted.
“Lan,” Zen said, and it was his voice, his face, her name in his mouth that she had heard over the course of the past several weeks. Relief crashed into her. “Why are you here?”
She stared at him, at that cool, unreadable face he had had the first night they’d met. The one she had found her way past little by little, like sun melting snow.
Now it felt like they were stepping backward, the distance between them growing.
“I came to find you,” Lan said. “Why did you take the star maps?”
He watched her without a flicker in his eyes. “Did I? I must have by accident. I came to search for the Elantians.”
Another lie. He had beaten the Elantians to this place. She could taste their approach in the air, in the steadily increasing presence of metal in the qì. There was very little time left. “There are no Elantians here.”Not yet.
Just like that, the thread between them drew taut. Zen’s gaze shuttered. “You do not trust me.”
“You lied to me,” she countered.
He closed his eyes briefly. “The last thing I wished was to hurt you.”
“What have you done?” Lan whispered, and the walls between them finally broke.
“I have bargained the only chance we have at victory,” Zen said. “My soul was forfeit from a very long time ago, Lan; it was written in the stars, as Master Feng so loves to claim. It was a worthwhile trade: a single person for the power to save this land and this people.”
