“Ah,” the innkeeper said, nodding. “The Temple of Truths. Legend says it used to sit at the peak of the Öshangma Light Mountain, behind our city. Yah, they say its steeples grazed the clouds, and that it was the doorway to another realm.”
Used to.Lan tipped her head. “We can visit the temple, right?”
A curious look crossed over the innkeeper’s face. He was no longer smiling. “Well, no,” he said slowly. “It’s no longer there. The Temple of Truths—and all the monks of the Yuè clan who ran it—vanished hundreds of cycles ago.”
It took Lan several moments to process his words. “Vanished?” she repeated, her heart sinking. “What do you mean? The entire temple’s gone?”
“Exactly as it sounds, apparently,” the innkeeper replied. “The story goes—so my grandmother tells me—that one day, worshipers made the trek up the Öshangma Light Mountain, and where the Temple of Truths had sat was nothing but earth and snow and pines. It was gone, as though it had never existed.”
Lan uttered a curse that the innkeeper didn’t hear, for at that moment, a call sliced through the hubbub of the Fragrant Sandcloud Tavern—in a language so harsh, it broke the harmony of all other tongues spoken in the place.
“Curfew!”
Too late, Lan became aware of the shift in the air, the cold and ominous press of metal qì that had slowly encroached upon the cheerful melee within the kè’zhàn. Two Elantianpatrols stepped through the doorway, several feet behind where she sat at the table closest to the innkeeper’s station.
“Not to worry,” the innkeeper said softly. He seemed to have sensed Lan’s unease. “They won’t bother anyone. It wouldn’t be good for trade relations if they terrified the merchants of the other kingdoms.”
But Lan had gone very still for another reason. The two Elantian patrols held scrolls in their hands. They paused at each table, speaking in low tones to the clusters of merchants and pointing to the portrait of a girl inked on the scrolls. A portrait above which she spottedhertruename—Sòng Lián.
Her heart was racing like a rabbit’s. Suddenly, it felt as though her Demon God, practitioning skills, and Art of Song were all gone and she was once again the helpless girl trapped in a Haak’gong teahouse, enduring the press of cruel fingers and the laughter of summer-green eyes.
Lan set down her chopsticks and slid a string of coins to the innkeeper. “Keep the change.”
As she slipped away, the innkeeper called, “Yah, wait, miss!” The sound cut through the kè’zhàn, and Lan froze. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Elantian patrols glance up in their direction. “It’s not safe out—especially tonight!”
Lan ducked her head and turned so her back faced the patrols. “Why not?” she asked, but she barely heard his response. She’d opened her senses to the qì around them and could feel the Elantians shift, their metal armor moving closer to her as they stopped by the next table.
Options raced through her head. Dilaya and Tai would be safe upstairs—safer than if the patrols discovered her here, at least. As the innkeeper had said, the Elantians would not terrorize foreign merchants and risk souring trade relations. The safest choice was for Lan to hide, or leave the kè’zhàn.
“It’s a full moon tonight,” the innkeeper was saying, andsomething in his tone gave Lan pause. “Each full moon, people who are outside say they can hear things that…aren’t truly there. It’s different for everyone. Some customers have said they heard the wail of their long-dead lovers. Others, the sound of a clock chiming, a bell tolling, children singing in thedark…and so on.” He dropped his voice. “You sought the City of Immortals. Well, some say that these occurrences are caused when the immortals of the Temple of Truths return as ghosts to haunt Nakkar…and that the City of Immortals resurfaces in our world.”
The Elantian patrols had turned away, now bending over another table. Lan summoned a shaky smile for the innkeeper. “If I do meet the singing children, I shall join them,” she said. “I’ve been looking for customers to perform my music for. See you soon!” And then she took off out the tavern door, leaving the innkeeper speechless at her quick exit.
The fear that had risen in her throat calmed slightly as soon as she slipped into the cloak of darkness outside, the night illuminated only by the eerie white glow of the moon from behind a cloud-covered sky. A cool desert wind had picked up, howling over the whitewashed walls. Gone from the now-empty streets were the colorful tarps of the daytime marketplaces; not a trace of the bright gems and bitter herbs and powdery spices remained. The kè’zhàns and winehouses had extinguished their lanterns and shut their doors, so that only their paper windows emitted faint flickering lights and the occasional trail of laughter or zither music.
She leaned against the tavern, its sand-smoothed walls digging into her scalp, gulping down breaths of air and calming the frantic beat of her heart. In the distance loomed the Öshangma Light Mountain, its snowy peak disappearing into the clouds.
“Hey! You!”
The words sizzled through her veins. Lan turned to see two more Elantian patrols, metal armor gleaming, making their way to her from across the street. Caution flared inside her. She’d seen a fair number of patrols last night, but only at the city gates and the walls. The streets of the city had remained clear.
She suddenly thought back to the figures she’d seen outlined against the sand dunes and the horizon. The feeling of a cold, wintry gaze raking her face. She had the feeling of a noose closing in around her neck. All those increased patrols. Those soldiers in the inn with the portrait of her.
The City of Immortals was not safe for her and her companions.
The silver of metal glinted at the edge of her vision. The Elantian patrols were making straight for her. “It’s curfew,” she heard them say. Her mind struggled to wrap around the Elantian words after having spent so long away from the language. “Why are you outside?”
Options flitted through her mind. Her hand was at her ocarina, her mind halfway toward the core of the Silver Dragon sleeping within her. But that would blow their cover. Even if she could use the power of her Demon God to get her, Tai, and Dilaya to safety, they would need to flee Nakkar…and lose their chance of finding anything related to Shaklahira here. Nakkar would be sent into a lockdown, its people interrogated…. She thought of Old Wei, the shopkeeper she’d befriended back in Haak’gong, killed at the hands of the Elantian White Angels simply because she’d given him a single silver spoon….
Stay, and she had no idea what they might do to her. Would they recognize her, a lone girl fitting the description of one of the most wanted Hin practitioners in the kingdom? Or…her mind drifted to the Elantian general who had attemptedto buy her one night at the teahouse in Haak’gong. His fingers wrapped around her throat, his casual laughter as she was choked by his hands.
Lan quickly glanced at her surroundings: a street of residential buildings, lanterns unlit, everything dim but for flickers of candlelight etched against fretwork paper windows.
She ran for it. She heard the Elantians’ shouts above thethud-thud-thudof her boots and her racing heart. Sensed the metal qì of their armor following her; the strands of desert heat mixing with cold wind, traces of teas and fabrics and spices billowing this way and that…and then, in the midst of it all…one qì that seemed to wrap around her chin and force her to look its way.
One so familiar…it was impossible.
He stepped out from the shadows of an alleyway, shedding darkness as the night released him, hands catching her by her arms and pulling her after him as he ran.
