From nearby came the sound of footsteps storming down the hall, metal striking the wood of the old western sidehouse floors. Shouts rent the air—rolling, foreign words that were all too familiar to Lan.
Master Shen stepped forward. In the glimmer of firelight, she was a figure of grace and serenity already cast in the gilding of time. A dagger in her hand caught the light as she sat in the chair.
“It is done,”she whispered into the death-filled space, filledwith the cries and screams of disciples she had taught and masters who had taught her.“Kingdom before life, honor into death. Do not fail us, Ruin of Gods.”Tears shimmered in her eyes; they gathered on her lashes as she closed them.“Peace be upon our souls, and may we find the Path home.”
The arc of her dagger cut sharp and bright across her throat.
The colorless light faded, and the ghost of Shen Ài disappeared, leaving the chamber dark and still, just as they had discovered it. In the center, the rosewood table and chair sat, empty, draped in a patina of peace as though Shen Ài had just woken from it minutes ago.
“There is some form of a Seal.” Zen’s boots scraped against the floor as he left Lan’s side to prowl the chamber, hand trailing the walls. “I have sensed it since we entered, but I cannot access it.” A pause. “I believe it is being held by the wills of the ghosts still tethered here. Bound, perhaps, by the souls of the very disciples who served and died here.”
Lan opened her mouth to reply. Whatever words she was about to speak, however, flew from her mind as another sound filled the space.
Do-do-sol.
Three small notes, an entire world upended. She knew this song. It was the one her mother had played the morning the Elantians invaded.
And suddenly, she knew what she had to do.
Lan drew breath and hummed.Do-do-sol.An answer. A confirmation.
Do-sol-do,came the responding trill.
Lan replied, the notes drawn from her lips by some unknown force.
Bymagic.
When the time is right,
This ocarina will sing…
And sing it did. Her responses seemed to have worked as an invisible key to unlock it. Music flowed, a single, lonely tune winding through the chamber. It coursed through Lan, flooding her mind and veins and into her very soul. Something inside her stirred: something ancient, a calling that felt like home.
Lan drifted toward its source. The music pulled her to the wall—the exact spot where, twelve cycles ago, Shen Ài had stood on the precipice of her death and opened the door to the Chamber of Forbidden Dreams. There was a Seal coiled against it; when Lan touched her palm to the smooth stone, the cold stung her fingers.
Still humming softly, Lan reached for her qì, and the exact Counterseal drifted into her mind, whole and complete and bright silver. She traced the strokes, her hands guided by the music.
The door revealed itself to her just as it had for Master Shen. Lan pulled it open and stepped through.
Inside stood that table with the scroll and the lacquerwood box. She brushed off the thick layer of dust, and the mother-of-pearl pattern gleamed white on its lid. The music crescendoed.
Lan opened the box, and there it was: the ocarina, its glazed clay surface unmarred by the passage of time or the fall of dynasties. The box had kept dust from it so that the pale inlay of the lotus shone like captured moonlight.
A knot formed in Lan’s throat; she reached forward and picked the ocarina up.
“ ‘An ocarina that plays no music,’ ” Zen said quietly, repeating the words the grandmaster had spoken so many cycles ago in this very chamber. “What does your mother mean for you to do with it?”
But Lan knew. The ocarina fit perfectly in her grip, asthough it had been molded into the grooves of her palm. By some instinct, she brought it to her lips.
When the time is right, this ocarina will sing for the Ruin of Gods.
Lan blew.
The purest note rang out, a crystal snowdrop against the stale air of the chamber.
There was a sound like a ghostly sigh by Lan’s side. Then, like a snipped string, the remaining Seal over the chamber broke. She heard Zen’s shout as qì quivered around the chamber; felt the implosion of the net of energies Shen Ài had woven all around them—the Seal Zen had been searching for.
He found Lan just as she’d dropped to her knees, huddling over the ocarina. Zen held her tightly against the tide of yin energies that roared over them, bearing the screams of a hundred slain souls, the pain and sorrow of a way of life lost. The chamber shook, the illusion falling and shattering around them as the true nature of the room revealed itself. Bamboo mats had been upturned and torn, inkpots shattered and brushes snapped, scattered like broken bones across the floor. Paintings had been knocked askance from the wall, their parchment scattered about the room like ashes. Chairs and tables were overturned, and strewn across the floor were the corpses of the School of Guarded Fists’ disciples, now empty skeletons.
