The bite of impatience in her tone sent the two commanders scurrying off.
Lishabeth nearly rolled her eyes. Reports had come that the Alloy had plunged off a cliff from the summit of the mountain; the scouts had found him in a pine forest, bloodied and barely breathing.
Soon enough, there came a shout. “Honorable Lady Lishabeth!”
Lishabeth turned to find a squad of soldiers running her way. Between them, they carried a pallet—on which lay the bloody, broken mess of armor and limbs that was Erascius.
“Is he alive?” Lishabeth asked skeptically.
“Yes, my lady.”
“Very well.” She turned her attention to the cavern. There was something down there, she was almost certain. She’d felt the faintest pulses of magic from within the darkness—magic reminiscent of what she’d sensed at the lake, watching the Hin boy eradicate an entire division of their army.
Lishabeth glanced at the soldiers. She took a torch from the nearest one; with a snap of her fingers, a spark danced from the band of firesteel on her wrist. The torch roared to life.
“With me,” she said to the soldiers curtly, and turned and stepped into the cavern.
She walked, hating the damp, musky air in here, the way the jagged stone walls seemed steeped in Hin magic. It made her skin crawl. Made her feel watched.
At the end of the cavern, a set of steps opened up, carved into the mountain wall. Lishabeth began her descent. The air grew thicker, the taste of Hin magic more sickening with every step. Once or twice, Lishabeth could swear she saw a shadow shift out of the corner of her eyes, heard a whisper echo in the silence around her.
Minutes passed, then abruptly, the stairs stopped. The dim light of her torch illuminated a circular chamber made of stone. She stepped inside.
The chamber was empty, yet something had once lain here: something with magic so old and powerful that it had seeped into the stone. It wasn’t until she’d stalked the perimeter of the chamber that she saw it.
Imprinted into the walls and ceilings of the room, glowing faintly blue, was the outline of a great tiger.
The Azure Tiger.
Shock rendered her speechless for a moment, followed by disbelief, then fury. Sothiswas what the Hin practitioners had stayed behind to guard on this mountain; they must have set it free in the final moments of battle to keep it from the Elantian magicians.
Erascius had sought these mythical beings—said to be made solely of Hin magic energy—ardently for twelve long cycles, and they had yet again let one slip through their fingers. But the Alloy had been right about one thing in his fanaticism for Hin magic. Lishabeth had seen the power of two of the Demon Gods tonight, and it was unimaginable.
One loose,Lishabeth counted,and three others.
The second, in that boy whose magic rippled like black fire.
The third, in that girl who cast spells with her music.
And then, a fourth and final that they had not yet managed to find.
“Medic,” she called. “Send the High General Erascius to a top care facility. If he dies, you and your squad will accompany him to the grave, you understand?”
The medic’s salute came quickly.
“The moment he awakens, send for me,” she continued, turning to survey the empty chamber again. The imprint of magic in the shape of a blue tiger shimmered faintly against the walls. “We will begin our search for the Azure Tiger.”
The greatest strength lies in getting back up after one falls down.
—Kontencian Analects (Classic of Society),7.1
Dawn broke in a bleached, watery white that spread across the sky. The rains had stopped. The earth held its silence. Raindrops clung to the pines like pearls and slid off the thin leaves of dragonscale ferns. A thin shroud of mist snaked around the trees in the forest.
Dilaya knelt on the wet soil, fingers pressed to it, brows furrowed as she examined it. “They came this way” was all she said before she straightened and marched on again, hand returning to grip Falcon’s Claw, as though she were afraid the sword would disappear.
Lan followed, Tai behind her.
They’d traveled in near-total silence since the night, making quick progress with long leaps and bounds of the Light Arts. Not long after Zen left, Dilaya and Tai had found Lan at the bottom of the escape steps carved into the cliffs. Together, they’d attempted to track the other disciples. There were two groups: the youngest and most vulnerable, led by Master Nur and the Nameless Master, and the group of disciples who hadbeen ordered to flee when the Elantians had breached the Boundary Seal. Lan had the impression that Dilaya was relentlessly driving them forward to keep herself preoccupied. To stop herself—and them—from absorbing the shock of what had just happened.
