He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything except back away, clutching at his face as though that would stop their onslaught. Pain crackled over his skin, lightning and fire and the stinging lash of a whip a thousand times over. Zen retreated blindly, feeling the qì surge against him.
He stumbled out into night, into silence. Fell to the ground and lay there for a moment, gasping in harried breaths and taking in the steady scent of the earth, the soil, the forest.
He was shaking as he sat up and wiped the trickle of blood from his lips.
Zen looked up just in time to see the Boundary Seal close against him.
The cleverest man underestimates his own abilities and overestimates his opponent’s.
—Kontencian Analects (Classic of Society),6.8
One bell earlier
Lan’s Gate Seal had spat her and Dilaya out right in front of the Most Hospitable Pine. With gritted teeth and a stream of colorful curses, she had dragged Dilaya through the Boundary Seal.
The whispers in the Seal were urgent, frenetic, and though she’d never been able to make out the words they spoke, she heard something akin to fear in the spirits’ voices as she crossed it. Skies’ End, as ever, lay unchanged in spite of her harriedheartbeats. The Yuèlù Mountains slumbered in silence, draped in thick fog; storm clouds swirled over the moon.
In her exhaustion, the world around her tilted as she setDilaya down. “Get up, Horse-face. I’d rather curse eighteen generations of my ancestors than carry you up these steps.”
The other girl was slumped against the gnarled trunk of a nearby pine. Her chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. Blood had crusted on the side of her face.
“Come on, Dilaya.” Lan poked the girl’s nose, trying toquell the rising fear in her chest. “I take it back, all right? I don’t wish you dead anymore. Just…just get up.”
“We all have. We all have wished her dead at least once.”
Lan turned at the familiar voice. Descending the last few steps of the mountain was Tai. Crashing through the brush, he at last came to a standstill at Lan’s side, shoulders slumped and hair tousled, looking extremely awkward without Shàn’jun’s effortless grace by his side.
“She is stubborn,” Tai said, looking down at Dilaya. “Annoying. She will live. Shàn’jun will see to it.”
“Tai,” Lan said, her voice scratching. She had so many questions, so much to say, but her last memory of him burned brighter than a flame: his hand on her wrist, his eyes lit up beneath that eternal frown.I know,he’d said.I know now.
“I did it,” Tai said. “I told Dilaya you left with Zen. Do not blame Shàn’jun. He thought you…were in danger.” The boy’s eyes were hooded as they swept the scene. They came to rest on Lan again. “Zen is gone.”
She held her breath against the sudden pain the words brought. Nodded.
Tai marched over to Dilaya. He stood beneath the shadow of the jagged pine, arms hanging by his sides as he stared at the prone girl. “I will take her,” he said at last. “You go. Go to the grandmaster.”
Lan’s feet pounded worn stone steps up the familiar path to the school. She could hear the faint murmur of conversation as she emerged from the copse of trees. The night, usually ink black and lit only by the luminescence of the moon and stars, was awash in torchlight. The boulder engraved with the characters of her school—School of the WhitePines—was illuminated in flickering yellow light, like a warning.
The light came from the Chamber of Waterfall Thoughts.Lan sprinted up the stone path and then over the wooden threshold of the chamber.
The masters stood in the soft light of the lotus lamps, deep in conversation. They looked up as she entered.
Lan paused. She had no idea what she should say.
The Demon Gods are back.
The Elantians are coming.
Both sounded utterly outlandish.
She was saved, unexpectedly, by Yeshin Noro Ulara.
“Where is Dilaya?” the Master of Swords asked. She wore her full armor, her hair done up in its austere middle part and two buns. Her two swords were strapped to her back, hilts gleaming in the lambent light.
Lan blinked. Given that the last time she’d seen Ulara was when she’d knocked her out, she’d been expecting murder from the elder Yeshin Noro.
“She came back with me,” Lan replied. “Tai is taking her to the Chamber of a Hundred Healings.”
