“It became outlawed by the Imperial Court at the beginning of the Last Kingdom. The emperors kept a select fewSpirit Summoners from the Chó clan at court and massacred all other known summoners. Tai is the last of his clan, as far as we know.” There was a hardness to Zen’s tone. “The regulations are not without reason—those well versed in the arts of summoning could find powerful spirits lurking and bind their powers to them.” His eyes narrowed. “I believe there is a ghost tethered to this chamber, holding a powerful Seal in place. It wants something. I will attempt to summon it.”
Lan looked around the empty chamber, too dark and too still. There again, that sense of something waiting in the shadows. Watching them. “Is there a way to summon a soul…from the world beyond?”
Zen’s gaze softened with understanding. “No,” he said. “The souls that have passed on are gone, never to be called back. Common folk believe that souls pass through the River of Forgotten Death to be washed of their memories; the truth is, the qì that formed one’s core simply dissipates, becoming one with the wind, the rain, the clouds, and the world all around us.
“What Tai did earlier was to gather the imprint of your mother’s qì that her soul had left while in this world. Echoes, footprints, if you will, of what they once were. But unless a soul is tethered to this world as a guior mó, all that we see of them are reflections of them when they were alive.”
Lan looked away.
“Lan,” Zen said gently, and when she met his gaze, she had the feeling he was looking straight into her heart. “Be glad the souls of those you love have passed beyond the River of Forgotten Death. For a soul to remain tethered to this world after death…is worse than an eternity of suffering.”
With that, he began to draw. The characters for this Seal were far more complicated than any she had previously seenZen perform. Yet the biggest difference, she sensed, was in the qì he pulled. There was the presence of the natural elements—but for the first time, energies of yin overpowered them. They rushed past Lan like currents of black, cold waters, weaving into the Seal. She could see the broad strokes of this Seal—the founding principles. One side of yáng, representing their world, the world of the living and the light; the other the side of yin, representing the world of death, of souls and ghouls. In the middle: a barrier separating them.
Zen slashed a stroke through that barrier and closed the Seal. Lan saw that the characters had formed the shape of a single, giant eye wreathed in fire. It pulsed.
The chamber responded. As the black flames of Zen’s Seal swept over the floors, a cold gale stirred, smelling of bones and broken things. The tips of the incense sticks—or what remained of them—flared out. And yet…there was light. It was soft and white, chasing after the darkness as though a layer of the world had been peeled back and this was what remained. An echo, an imprint. Figures began to move all around them, somehow sharing the space with them and yet not. Voices rose and fell like the rush of an invisible current bearing days, moons, cycles, dynasties past.
At last, the lightless light settled, all else vanishing but for a figure perched on the empty chair. It was a woman, hair pulled tight to her head in a braided bun, páo spilling like moonlit water down the length of her legs. She appeared to be asleep, an arm draped over the rosewood cabinet, cheek resting on her wrist.
She stirred, just as there came a sound of doors opening behind Lan. She spun to look, but the doors to the chamber remained as they had left them.
“Ah,” Zen said quietly. “This is a memory.” Glancing at him,Lan was stricken by just how solid and full of life he looked compared to the woman. “This guihas chosen to communicate with us through a memory.”
“Master Shen Ài.”A smooth male voice cut through space and time, reverberating slightly as though pulled from a distant dream.
The woman—the master—stood. She might have been around the age of Lan’s mother.“Is she here?”Her voice was lovely yet faded as rust-colored roses.
“No.”The word fell like the dead drop of an axe. A pause, then:“I do not think she is coming, Ài’ér.”
Master Shen’s lips trembled.“And my brother—”
“The imperial government has fallen. We are left on our own.”
Master Shen’s hand flew to her mouth. She closed her eyes as though to steady herself.“Their daughter?”
A sudden, chilling premonition struck Lan, stealing the breath from her.
“The invaders reached the Sòng dà’yuàn several days ago. Whatever reports we have received by messenger dove stated that no survivors were found.”
Lan could not breathe. The room seemed to distort before her eyes, shadows curving and swaying. White snow. Blue armor. Red blood. Strings of a woodlute broken as easily as her mother’s bones—
“This arrived from the Tian’jing Imperial Palace, addressed to you,”the male speaker continued.
When Shen Ài opened her eyes again, they were clear. Her face had set. She straightened and crossed the room.
The chamber lit up where she walked, surroundings shifting as though she held the pale light that offered a view into another world, another time. Bookshelves burgeoned, overflowing with scrolls and tomes. Paintings cascaded down the walls, bearing scenes of rivers and mountains, pagodas andpavilions, abloom in the calligraphy of poems now lost. Bamboo mats unfurled on the floors, pots of ink and rolls of rice paper stacked by each one. This had once been a classroom, flourishing with knowledge and history and culture—yet when Shen Ài’s lightless light disappeared, all else faded but for the stark walls and empty floors.
Shen Ài stopped by the door. That, too, had shifted: peeled paint now glossy and vibrant. And beneath the doorframe—
Lan inhaled sharply. She felt Zen’s hand brush her sleeve: a touch of comfort, and a question. Her heart, her mind were in freefall as she instinctively reached for him. His fingers, burning against her ice-cold ones, clasped around hers.
The male speaker was the grandmaster of the school. He stood at the door, in the same silken robes as they’d seen on his spirit in the courtyard earlier, tall and alive and wholly human. In his hands, he held a lacquerwood box inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
Lan and Zen approached, watching carefully as Shen Ài took it from him and flipped it open.
“A xun?”she asked, glancing up at the grandmaster as she unwrapped a red silk handkerchief to reveal what resembled a large, black egg made of glazed clay. Several columns of finger holes had been drilled into it, and on the surface,inlaid with mother-of-pearl, was the outline of a white lotus.
Lan felt her whole world snap into sharp focus.Gods guide her to hear the song of the ocarina,her mother had said, and Lan knew immediately that the object the ghost held was what everything—her Seal, the song, her mother’s imprint—had ledto.
