A pause, and then the second voice—Captain Timosson—spoke. “No, I getthat,” he said a bit gruffly. “Now that our power has stabilized on the eastern coasts, we’re expanding west. More resources, better control.”
“But you do not understand why this mission is so critical,” Erascius said coldly. “If there still exists an order of Hin practitioners, Elantian rule could very well fall under threat one day. You have not seen their powers; you know nothing of the magic they possess, which they seem to draw from this land in a way we Royal Magicians cannot. Magic that we can learn in order to contribute to the Elantian civilization and continue our expansion across oceans. Magic as old as time, which makes them as powerful asgods.And while I do not expect your complete understanding as to why this mission is crucial to King Alessander’s control over this land, I expectobedience.” The last word cracked like a whip.
“Yes, my lord,” Timosson said breathlessly, any traces of disgruntlement gone from his tone. “And you think we can smoke them out here?”
Erascius was so close to the hidden chamber that his voicesounded in Zen’s ear. “I wish to kill two birds with one stone: to find the secret sanctuary of Hin magicians…and to destroy them with the power of their Four Demon Gods.”
Zen’s entire body froze over.
“You can’t believe those are real,” Timosson said, but there was a note of uncertainty to his voice.
“Iknowthey are real. I have witnessed their power firsthand, back at the Imperial Palace. They slipped through my fingers, and I have sought them ever since. The research facility I ran confirmed my suspicions that the Hin bind demons to themselves to borrow their power. I have seen the power of a regular demon. Imagine what one could do with the power of aDemon God.”
The research facility.
It was all Zen could do to anchor his mind to the present. To clasp his arms—arms that bore scars from Elantian metalwork in the very research facility Erascius spoke of—and stop their shaking.
“I believe we came close to discovering their secrets twelve cycles ago from a Hin imperial practitioner, but she put up a stubborn resistance. I had no choice but to kill her,” Erascius was saying. “I’d thought that trail cold, the secrets lost with her death. It wasn’t until I felt some semblance of her magic in Haak’gong again several weeks ago that I realized: she had a daughter who had been living right under our noses all along. Therefore, we must findher.”
A Hin imperial practitioner.Lan had told Zen this magician—Erascius—had killed her mother in order to obtain something from her.
Couldthisbe what Lan’s mother had died to protect? Secrets related to demonic practitioning…related to the Demon Gods themselves?
Impossible,Zen thought, his gaze drifting to the girl by hisside. Lan, too, had gone utterly still. He could see her in the dim light of the Seals, lips parted, the box with the ocarina clasped to her chest as a child might clutch a doll for comfort.
Questions burned inside him like fire the longer he watched her. Who was her mother? How could she have come across such knowledge? The trails to the Four Demon Gods had been lost with time, become secretive as powerful practitioners across the Last Kingdom fought for their possession, and then as the Imperial Court sought to control them. And the last known of the Four, the Black Tortoise, had vanished with the death of his final binder, the Nightslayer.
“Nothing here, Erascius,” Lishabeth said at last, her voice muffled as though coming from a corner of the outer chamber. “Perhaps a wanton ghoul triggered an old Seal.”
The clink of boots over rubble sounded near. “I am rarely mistaken.” Erascius’s voice came not two steps from the hidden chamber. He seemed to have been lingering there all along. “But perhaps I will admit to error this time.”
“Of course,” Lishabeth said quickly.“Isensed it, too. Something went off here, something magical.”
“They have slipped through my fingers yet again. They will not be so lucky next time.” Erascius’s words were a promise, laced with poison. “Let us not waste more time in these ruins. Twelve cycles, and the stench of Hin has not yet diminished.”
Their footsteps faded into nothingness. Zen remained where he was, leaning against the wall, the shock of the past minutes roaring in his mind, cracking through his blood. His heart was racing as it hadn’t in a long time.
“Zen?”
He blinked, his attention returning to the present. Lan stood opposite him. In the pale glow of the Seals around them, her face was white as a ghost. He stared at her, at this songgirlhe’d found in a common teahouse in Haak’gong, and for the first time felt the tug of the strings of fate, moving him in a direction he could not have anticipated.
The signs had all been there. The traces of yin qì he’d sensed back in the old hawker’s shop in Haak’gong. The explosion of energies, the way she had killed an Elantian soldier without so much as batting an eyelash. The Seal-shaped scar on her wrist, her precociousness in creating advanced Seals after only weeks of practice.
And the ocarina…the mysterious ocarina that had sung to her.
Lan’s mother might have given her clues to the location of the vanished Demon Gods.
“Zen?” Lan repeated.
He stared at her, at the ocarina case she cradled against her chest. The one that might hold the keys to immeasurable power.
The one that might change the tides of history.
Zen knew, without a doubt, Dé’zi’s and Yeshin Noro Ulara’s stances on the Demon Gods, on seeking out their power to defeat the Elantians.
The Four are gods, Zen,Dé’zi had said once, several cycles ago, when Zen had proposed the idea to him.You have studied the history of our land, of the warring clans, the rise of the First Kingdom, the iron fist of the Middle Kingdom, and the blood-paved path of the Last Kingdom. You know the price men have paid to attain power. The powers of gods are meant to remain with the gods; we humans were never meant to be gods.
Yet Zen thought of the grandmaster they had seen in the courtyard, reduced to a savage mó in a desperate bid to protect his school; to Shen Ài and the disciples of the School of Guarded Fists, forced to bind their souls into the limbobetween life and death; to the once-great symbol of civilization reduced to ruin by Elantian conquerors, unburied bodies of its defenders mocked by their murderers.
