“This is the end of the Boundary Seal.” Zen’s voice was a low thrum, his figure a half shadow cast by the moon’s shifting light. “It is marked by this tree, called the Most Hospitable Pine. You will feel a moment of resistance upon crossing the Seal.”
He stepped through, his silhouette rippling and then settling as though he’d walked through a wall of water.
Lan couldn’t help throwing a glance back. In the deep night, the mountain was a swath of shadows, smelling of wet soil and pines and filled with the sleepy chirp of critters in thebrush.
A part of her wanted to stay: extract the metalwork from her arm, destroy the tracking spell, and stay at Skies’ End, where, in the past moon, she had begun to find a semblance of a home.
But she had spent enough of her life hiding. Twelve long cycles, most of it spent looking away from the truth of her kingdom, casting her gaze down and bowing before the Elantians even as her friends and loved ones and other people around her continued to die.
It was time to stop running. It was time to face the truth of whatever her mother had entrusted to her.
Heart in her throat, Lan followed.
Passing the Boundary Seal felt like walking through a thickened patch of air. Qì swirled in shades of white, blanketing her world for a breath. In the distance before her, in the whorl of wind, the shape of a woman stood in the fall of snow, no more than a ghost. In the silence, the haunting echoes of a song. There were figures moving all around Lan—figures that vanished when she tried to look at them directly. People were talking, just out of earshot, voices familiar and unfamiliar, twining around a thread of music…if she could just walk deeper into the snow…she might be able to reach them…
Something latched onto her wrist, and she found herself jerked forward. All at once, the snow, the voices, the song, vanished.
She stepped out on the other side of the barrier. Zen’s hand was steady over her bare wrist, the touch of his skin both grounding her and unsettling her. “I think…” Lan swallowed. “I think I saw my mother.”
Zen’s mouth tightened; he did not let go. She did not want him to. “The Boundary Seal reaches into the very depths of your heart to understand your intentions toward this school,” he explained. “It is held together by the spirits of masters and grandmasters who served the school in life and now protect it in their eternal deaths. So long as you bear no ill intentions toward the school, the Seal will allow you to enter.”
Lan glanced back. The stone steps had vanished, replaced by an outcropping of rock covered by mossy ferns. There was no trace of the school.
“Now come,” Zen continued. “We are short on time.”
The Gate Seal he was to perform would lead to a location he had passed by before, one that was close to where Guarded Mountain sat. At about a day’s travel from Skies’ End, the distance, he’d assured her, would not require excess qì.
It felt almost natural to wrap her arms around his waist and gently press her cheek to his chest. She felt his fingers fall gently against her back. Then he raised his other hand. The energies around them surged as they rose to his calling.
“Zen,” she said, tipping her head up to look at him. “What do you see when you pass through the Boundary Seal?”
The Gate Seal glowed against the night, black flames rimmed silver. Zen’s hand tightened around her waist as he drew the finishing stroke.
“Pork buns,” he replied, and they tipped forward. The scenery around them blurred, trees lifting and soil shifting and sky churning in the space of a drawn breath.
—
When it all settled again and the flare of energies died, they stood on a dirt path in the midst of an evergreen forest.
Zen shot Lan a look. “Here we are,” he said, taking in their surroundings. “I passed by here once, cycles ago. Do you know where to go, or what you’re looking for here?”
Slowly, Lan shook her head. She had no idea where to even begin.
Zen tipped his head and began to walk. “I have never gone up to Guarded Mountain myself, but I do know that a village sits at its base. That might be a good place to start; it should be this way.”
The trees grew sparse, and a dirt path appeared beneath their feet. Through the canopy, they could make out the jagged silhouettes of mountains in a shade darker than night.
The pái’fang appeared suddenly in the midst of the forest, the stone pillars of the gateway bone white in the moonlight. They might once have borne characters, but the surfaces had been worn smooth by the relentless beat of weather, their messages stolen by the erosion of time. Only a sign at the very top of the path was still legible:Village of the Fallen Clouds.
A cold wind rose, scattering husks of leaves as they stepped through the pái’fang and into a street of clay-walled houses with ridged roofs, eaves curving downward so that rainwater flowed off them during the wet season. The farther they walked, the more evident it became that the village had been abandoned. Windows gaped, some with slashed screens; a few doors stood open, the wreckage within gleaming like exposed ribs.
Lan shivered. Something festered here—something rotten that permeated the air and energies.
Zen turned to her, evidently sensing her unease. “The yin energy is strong here.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “What does that indicate? More spirits?”
“Not necessarily. Do you remember we went over the makeup of qì?” Zen brought his two hands together, one curving over the other. “All around us, the natural elements are constantly in motion, being created and consumed in an endless cycle. Water grows wood, wood sustains fire, fire births earth, and so on. It is the same on the spectrum of yin and yáng: both are perpetually shifting, one into the other.
