“Dismiss your Demon God” was all the Nameless Master said.
“You do not give me orders.”
“I have spent eleven cycles with you as your teacher. Were I inclined to harm you, you would hardly be standing here today.” The Nameless Master’s intonation was smooth; it was difficult to discern whether they were meant as a threat or a placation.
Zen gritted his teeth, but humored the master and severed his connection to the Black Tortoise.
The shadows seemed to retreat. The air seemed to lighten. And whatever wariness he had felt toward his master dissipated.
The Master of Assassins blinked. “You, too, feel it.”
Zen kept his face blank. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“What did you see that drove you to attack Shàn’jun?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Zen repeated, a cord tightening in his chest. “He simply startled me.”
“You do not see things that make you question what is illusion and what is reality? Perhaps a voice in the dark, a face in the shadows, a creature closing in on you?”
The hairs on Zen’s neck pricked, and he thought of themonstrous creature with the empty eye sockets and rotted skin. The feeling that something was always watching him, hidden to the eye, in the folds between the worlds of yáng and yin, life and death.
The answer must have been apparent in his pause, for the master took a step forward. “I worked for the imperial palace. I know the effects of demonic possession. Specifically, the effects of so much yin upon the balance of your core of qì. If you do not wish to lose your mind to the Demon God within you, then you must act now, before it is too late.” Another step forward. “Your quest for the Phoenix brings you westward. I now impart to you another point of consideration.
“There was an ancient clan known to guard the truths of this world,” he continued, his face turned to the dark corridor that led to the dungeons and all the secrets the Mansorians had buried within, all the histories lost to time. “It was said that the imperial family consulted them throughout the ages and grew powerful from the secrets they shared. With this clan’s help, the imperial family was able to keep their sanity while being bound to their Demon God, enabling them to rule effectively for dynasties. And with this clan’s help…they had access to secrets of the Demon Gods.” At last, the master raised his eyes to meet Zen’s. There was something like pity in them, and something like sympathy. “Your great-grandfather’s mind was swallowed by the yin energies of the Black Tortoise too soon. It is no small burden to carry, Xan Temurezen; there is a reason the forefathers of practitioning advocated for balance to be the Way. Too much yin, and your qì will grow poisoned. Unstable.”
Unstable.Zen thought of Xan Tolürigin’s final act, the blood of the innocent he’d left in his wake that had stained his reputation.Madness,the village folk whispered.Demonic possession.
Pure evil.
Zen’s grasp tightened on Nightfire’s hilt. “How long did the imperial family have before they were consumed?” he asked.
“Do not misunderstand,” the master replied. “The ending of a demonic bargain is always inevitable. But they were able to live a life in control of their own minds. That is what I have surmised from observing the imperial physician in my time at the palace.”
But Zen had stopped listening.Live a life.
When he’d sworn his soul to the Black Tortoise, he’d cut off all remaining hope of having any semblance of a life, a future. He’d vowed to give all that was left of himself—body, mind, then soul—to take back this land from its colonizers and return it to the Ninety-Nine Clans, as it always should have remained.
And the Zen of one cycle ago—rigid, disciplined, and without a want for anything else in this world—would have harbored no regrets in carrying this out.
That was, until his path had become inextricably intertwined with a songgirl at a southern teahouse. When Zen dreamed, when Zen thought of the glimpses of joy he’d known in his life, his memories danced with her—with Lan. In that small village in the mountains, shielded from the world by mist and gentle rain, a new hope had taken root inside him.
Perhaps…just perhaps…there was a way for him to use the Black Tortoise’s power without losing his mind—at least, for a while more. Perhaps he could take back this landandlive to rule it, to see the clans reestablish themselves and practitioners once again walk the rivers and lakes of old.
And perhaps, just perhaps…he could do all of that with the girl he loved by his side.
Hope was a cruel thing. He’d done his best to douse those embers, yet with the Nameless Master’s words, they began to spark again.
“Where is this clan?” he asked.
The Nameless Master looked unsurprised, as though his shrewd eyes had watched every thought in Zen’s mind unfold. “In the Emaran Desert, near the edge of this kingdom, lies the City of Immortals. Nakkar, where the Yuè clan once resided.”
Zen had read of the Yuè in sparse references that were seen as near-mythical in their world now. “The Yuè clan perished many dynasties ago,” he said.
“Vanished,” the Nameless Master corrected. “The Yuè clan knew the secrets to immortality, to the realms that may lie beyond our world. When mortals began to seek out those secrets in pursuit of their own ambitions, the burden became too much for them to bear. They simply vanished.
“Yet legends say that in the hours of night when the moon is full and the yin is strong, the boundaries between our world and other realms—those of spirits, of ghosts, of souls—grow weak. Perhaps there are answers to be found in Nakkar.”
Those sparks of hope caught flame. Nakkar. A real city. How would it feel to truly command the power of the Black Tortoise without fearing for his sanity, without feeling like his time was sand in a glass, slowly trickling to an inevitable end?
