Very well.The Dragon reared back, baring row upon row of shiny white teeth.Your mother promised me her soul, for the protection of your life. That is all.
Lan’s fingers stilled. The music fell silent. Yet the Demon God remained in her vision, an illusion borne of the currents of qì. Watching her.
“Her soul,” Lan whispered, ice creeping through her veins. Zen had told her that the souls devoured by a demon wouldnever find rest, never cross the River of Forgotten Death.For a soul to remain tethered to this world after death…is worse than an eternity of suffering.
She stood, her hands suddenly trembling. “Let her soulgo.”
I am afraid that isn’t part of the bargain,the Dragon replied.A bargain is irreversible, young mortal.
“There is always a way,” Lan replied. “Name your condition. Name your price.”
Oh, but her soul is worth so many more,the Silver Dragon crooned, and Lan had the urge to sink her nails into its face and gouge its eyes out.I’m afraid it isn’t quite replaceable. Unless…It drew so close in the blink of an eye that Lan flinched.Perhaps her daughter’s soul would do. Younger in age, and with just as much power.
“Deal,” Lan replied. “When I am done with you, you may have my soul in exchange for my mother’s. But only my soul—not my mind, nor my body. And only once you have fulfilled your duty of protecting my life…and I am ready to give it up.”
The Silver Dragon narrowed its eyes.The bargain is made,it said, and suddenly, it lunged forward. Lan was falling, the sky and mountain and trees disappearing in a tunnel of white. In her mind’s eye, she saw the white core of the Silver Dragon pulse in her chest, tendrils of its qì wrapping around her left arm so that it was aglow. Pain seared across her wrist, and when she looked down, her mother’s Seal was vanishing, each stroke fading like water drying in the sun. In its place, new words wrote themselves, carving each stroke like the pale slash of a scar.
Her truename, Sòng Lián, the characters interposed upon each other. A circle drawn to surround it, to complete the Seal. The new bargain.
The glow, the fire, the pain receded. Lan blinked in the pale morning light. The sounds of the forest—the chirp of birdsand hum of insects and whisper of leaves—began to return in drips and drops. Behind her, Dilaya and Tai leaned against the trunk of a pine, in soft conversation. They knew nothing of the exchange that had just taken place—one carried out in Lan’s mind.
Everything and nothing had changed.
Lan turned to find the Silver Dragon still watching her, that icy gaze flickering. Its tail flicked, and it reared up suddenly, drawing to its full height in her mind’s eye. Uncoiled, it towered above the tallest mountains, rising until its horned head touched the sky and its great open maw might have swallowed the sun.
Those sky-blue eyes curved in the semblance of a smile.
Well then, Sòng Lián, what will we accomplish together?
Lan turned her gaze to the rising sun, toward the mountains where Skies’ End stood. Where the bodies of eight masters lay, amidst the ruins of what had once been a pinnacle of her culture, her heritage.
The Sòng clan reached an agreement to serve the imperial family as advisors in an attempt to seek out the Godslayer,Dé’zihad said.Your mother included.
“We travel west to Shaklahira, the Forgotten City,” Sòng Lián said to her Silver Dragon. “We hunt down the other Demon Gods to finish what my mother started.
“Then, together, we destroy the Elantian regime.”
Yin and yáng, good and evil, great and terrible, kings and tyrants and heroes and villains. The tropes in the classics of old are but a matter of perspective. Really, they are two sides of the same coin. He who lives to tell the tale decides which side to pick.
—Collection of apocryphal and banned texts, unknown origin
As the night receded and day spread its light over the world, the fog in his mind began to clear, too. The Black Tortoise was said to draw its energy from darkness and night; he’d noticed that daytime suited him less the more he drew on the Demon God’s power.
Zen came to a stop atop the peak of a mountain. It was remarkable, the power of a Demon God. A single night’s travel had achieved what he might not have in two weeks. Beneath him, the landscape was already beginning to shift. A great river snaked past the mountains, separating the Central Plains from the ShuBasinlands: a strip of sunken territory filled with broadleaf forests that had once been home to several clans. A few weeks’ travel to the east, Zen knew, rice paddies and tea farms zigzagged like a patched cloth as far as the eye could see.
But Zen was interested only in what lay beyond the Basinlands.
Carefully, he set down the boy in his arms. Aside from several scratches on his cheeks, Shàn’jun was mostly unmarredfrom the battle. Zen had managed to shield him from most of the fire and explosions.
Zen took a strip of cloth from the Medicine disciple’s satchel—still damp with rain—and began to wipe down the boy’s hands. Blood did not suit Shàn’jun as dirt marred clear riverwater.
Zen’s gaze lingered on the boy’s face—a face that had once constituted so much of his world. They had been best friends, once. Before Zen had lost control of his first demon and hurt Dilaya. From then on, Zen had made sure to distance himself from the people he cared for most.
He simply hadn’t managed to do it when it came to Lan. Even as he was now, even with her choice to stand against his goal, he could not imagine a world without her in it. He recalled, in the thick fog he’d been lost in last night, an instinct tugging on his heart. It might have been a dream, but he thought he remembered his arms around her back, breathing in the scent of lilies that clung to her, her hair tickling his cheeks. And her voice, a silver light in his world before the darkness of his Demon God had consumed him again.
A streak of pain burned in his chest when he thought of her, so intense that he stopped what he was doing for a moment to clutch a hand to his heart, gritting his teeth. Inside him, he sensed a rising anger that belonged to the other owner of his body.
Body, mind, then soul,the echo of that voice hissed.
