Did you?that whispering voice inside him hissed.You could have taken the Gate Seal directly to the School of the White Pines from Haak’gong. All you had to do was choose to let me free.
No. He knew well enough that that was not an option to consider. He knew the risks, and the consequences of what he had done ten cycles ago sat across from him in this very chamber.
“Master Nóng will return from his journey within the next fortnight,” Dé’zireplied. “We will require the oversight of the Master of Medicine during this difficult operation.”
“I’ll wait,” Lan blurted. Zen’s head snapped in her direction. “In the meantime…please, let me stay here. I want to learn practitioning.”
Ulara made a furious noise, but Dé’zilooked intrigued. He leaned forward, cup of tea forgotten in his hands. “You wish to join the School of the White Pines and study practitioning and the principles of the Way?”
“I do.”
The steel in her expression cast Zen back to the morning after they had met, the sun breaking fierce over her face. He had known this girl for her joviality, her quick wit and words, yet there had been no hint of a jest on her face at that time.Teach me to be powerful, so that I will not have to watch another person I love fall to the Elantian regime.
“Shi’fù.” Zen’s voice rasped, yet he could not stop himself. “I would vouch for her. Allow me to train her here, as a disciple.”
In a sudden move, Lan pressed her arms and forehead to the floor in prostration. “Please, Grandmaster.”
Dé’zilooked between the two of them. Finally, he took a sip of tea and sighed. “Master Ulara, kindly perform a new Seal on the metalwork to restrict the tracking spell and slow the metalwork’s spread. Lan, I will ask that you rest tonight and regain your strength in the more-than-adequate care of Disciple Shàn’jun.”
Shàn’jun blushed. Ulara scowled. Zen held his breath. Behind them all, Dilaya’s gaze promised murder.
“And tomorrow, you will begin classes.” Dé’ziraised his cup of tea. “Welcome to Where the Rivers Flow and the SkiesEnd.”
Caterpillar fungus (also known as yartsa gunbu or winter-worm, summer-grass) is part animal, part vegetable, and contains an excellent balance of yin and yáng with myriad healing effects.
—Medicine Master Zur’mkhar Rdo’rje,Instructions on Ten Thousand Healing Herbs
Lan remembered little of the rest of that afternoon. Shàn’jun gave her a cup of numbing draft and had her lie down on the kàng. The warm liquid filled her stomach; the sheets were warm and soft against her skin. The sun hung low on the horizon, the color of a ripe mandarin, when Yeshin Noro Ulara was finally ready to perform the Seal.
“This will hurt,” the Master of Swords said, and without further ceremony pressed her fingers to Lan’s forearm.
Lan felt a dull, throbbing pain before she gave herself over to the effects of the numbing draft. It fogged her brain and blurred her senses until time seemed to skip and skid. The sun’s shifting light slipped across her like a fast-flowing stream, voices rushing all around her as though she were underwater. She saw phantoms in that blur of consciousness, saw the ghostly shape of Ying turn into the silhouette of her mother in that snowfall twelve cycles ago, before darkness swallowed them all. And in that darkness came a shadow, writhing gray, rearing its head to watch her.
Find me, Sòng Lián.
The shadow turned into a colorless light, bright and searing, until it tore across her entire world.
When she came to, sunlight slanted gold across the windowsill. A late-afternoon breeze stirred across her cheeks, bringing with it the distant chimes of bells and the sound of laughter. For a moment, she might have been back at the Teahouse, rousing from an evening nap, the chattering of songgirls at their chores drifting upstairs to her.
“Ah, you’re awake.” A distinctly non-songgirl voice, though gentle and unimposing.
Lan turned to see Shàn’jun seated on a stool near the back room, a tome splayed open in his lap. He closed it carefully, set it aside, then stood and disappeared into the back room for several moments. When he reappeared, he held a steaming bowl. The porcelain spoon he used to stir made little clinking sounds against the rim.
“My arm,” Lan croaked, looking down. Her left forearm was an ugly mottled map of greens and purples where the flesh had bruised, and swollen reds where the Winter Magician’s metalwork had spread through her veins. Now, in the center of her forearm was a small, concentrated blot of metal, darkened to near-black. Over it, she could sense the strokes of a Seal, holding in magic that seemed to ooze from the metalwork.
Most important, the scar on her wrist stood out, pale and gleaming amidst the carnage.
“They contained the metalwork where it was spreading through your blood,” Shàn’jun explained. “It’s now concentrated in one area, where the spell is still active yet restricted by Master Ulara’s Seal. Do you mind if I…?” He gestured at the edge of the kàng.
“Go ahead,” she said, pushing herself up and trying not to stare at the strange new sight that was her arm.
Shàn’jun sat. He scooped out a spoonful of whatever was in the bowl and blew on it. “I admit, I’m no cook, but I promise you’ll feel better if you drink this.” He raised the spoon and bowl toward her, lifting an eyebrow and curling the edges of his mouth, as though to entice her.
Lan obliged. She regretted it instantly. It was the worst soup she had ever tasted, as though someone had made the bitterest medicine and attempted to mask it with salts and sugars and stirred in some soft, chewy chunks of…was thatgarlic?
She spluttered, dripping the abomination of a concoction all over the clean sheets.
“Oh,” Shàn’jun said in dismay. “That was the last of our caterpillar fungus.”
