When the chamber settled again, Lan found the truth of the School of Guarded Fists split open before her: yet another Hin landmark, fallen to the desolation of conquest.
“Lan. Lan, look at me.”
She found Zen’s gaze. His expression was one of ice frozen over, reminiscent of what she had seen the night he’d brought her out of Haak’gong. There had been no pity on his face, only hard-edged empathy.
Do not let them win today.
Lan thought of Master Shen, her soul bound to this chamber to protect the ocarina for twelve cycles. Of the grandmaster, reduced to a snarling, senseless shell of a demon. Of the disciples whose spirits had remained behind in the deathless eternity of a gui.
Of Mama, whose last act had been to sacrifice herself to let Lan live.
And for what?
When the time is right, this ocarina will sing for the Ruin of Gods.
Ruin of Gods—she hadn’t even any idea what the term meant.
All Lan knew was that the ocarina had chosen to sing for her. That twelve cycles of fruitless search over the Seal her mother had left in her wrist had led her here. That an entire school—masters, grandmaster, disciples—had given their lives for this moment.
Her grip tightened on the smooth surface of the ocarina.
She had not been able to save them—not twelve cycles ago, not even today.
She would not let that happen again.
Lan clenched her teeth and brushed away the wetness on her cheeks. She stood sharply, wrenching her arm from Zen’s. “Thank you for accompanying me here, Zen,” she said.
He dipped his head slightly, those ink-black lashes fluttering as he watched her. “Any idea of what that ocarina might hold?” he asked.
Lan didn’t—but she was saved from her response.
A shift in the energies, the overwhelming presence of metal. Then: the faint sound of conversation, words long androlling. The clipped fall of boots against the courtyard outside.
Elantians.
The Final Art is the unique craft of each school of practitioning, unlocked as a highest honor bestowed by the grandmaster upon his disciples.
—The Way of the Practitioner, Addendum: The Hundred Schools
Zen grasped Lan’s arm. “In here,” he said, and pulled her to the still-open doors of the Chamber of Forbidden Dreams—the only area that appeared to have escaped the destruction of the Elantian conquest.
Lan resisted. “We’ll be trapped,” she whispered.
“We won’t be found,” Zen corrected. When Shen Ài’s illusion Seal over the entire room had broken, it had revealed the true form of this room—including the Chamber of Forbidden Dreams and the remaining network of Seals over it. “The Seals hiding this chamber of the Final Art are built into the very bricks and stones of their walls. Even the Elantians did not find it during their invasion.”
She appeared to think through this reasoning before she yielded. The space was cramped, hardly bigger than a latrine stall and made to accommodate only the table with the ocarina—but Zen had not seen any other Final Art chamber to judge.
He pulled the doors closed and watched the Seals swirl intoeffect, the strokes to their characters glowing softly. The designs were at a level too advanced even for him. Hand against the wood, he sensed a Seal weaving the illusion of stone onto the other side, masking the presence of the door; a few others were layered over for protection and concealment. Then, to his surprise: something resembling a Gate Seal. Studying it a moment longer, he let out a breath.
“This is ingenious,” he murmured. “They created an advanced Gate Seal to transport this chamber into a different space. When the doors are opened, the Gate Seal reverses, transporting it back for access. Yet it is nearly impossible to know of the existence of the door—let alone to find it and to perform the Counterseal to open it.”
He had no idea how Lan had managed to not only find but also unlock this hidden Final Art chamber, but one thing was clear. The answers to everything—the yin in her qì, the speed of her learning, the songs only she could hear—lay in the ocarina.
The darkness in the chamber gradually eased, filled with the dim churn of the glow from the Seals as they were activated. The weaves of qì were so old, they had sunken into the foundations of the structure itself so that the bricks seemed to shimmer. Across from Zen, Lan’s eyes were wide, her pupils dilated, the Seal magic brushing her cheeks like reflections of water. She stood close enough that he could feel the fabric of her páo brush against him; one of her hands was gently latched onto his sleeve.
“I thought Seals vanished once the practitioner’s soul passed,” she murmured.
“Correct. Yet in many cases, the weave of qì sinks in so deeply that the object retains the Seal in itself—much like the cesspools of qì that formed the bamboo yao we met. In thiscase, the walls and roots of this school have retained the Seals as a part of them, becoming…almost sentient. Like a muscle memory.”
