Lan stood in the memory, feeling as though her breathing had numbed and time had stopped. She had thought demonic bargains were irreversible: that once bound, a demon remained with the practitioner until death parted them. That would be when the practitioner’s soul, instead of flowing into the River of Forgotten Death or dispersing into the world, would be consumed by the demon.
But I changed the Silver Dragon’s bargain with Mama,she thought suddenly.I wrote a new bargain with it, and it accepted.
Hóng’yì was still speaking, in his memory.“Then you will take fù’wáng’s soul,”the child version of the prince said, scowling.
“I will release it, in exchange for yours. Shuò’lóng has fed me tens of thousands of souls over our shared bargain; I no longer crave his, for his soul is weak. It will no longer sate me as yours would.”A cunning curve of the emperor’s chapped lips when the Demon God saw Hóng’yì’s hesitation.“Your father is dying. With war at your doorstep, he will agree to this, to transfer his power to his only son. The future of his lineage.”
Hóng’yì’s lips parted, the uncertainty to his gaze hardening into greed.
The Demon God’s smile widened on the emperor’s face.“Do you agree to this bargain with me, Crown Prince Zhào Hóng’yì of the Last Kingdom?”it said softly.“To hold command of my power, and in return, I will ask for you, all of you: body, mind, then soul.”
“Yes,”Hóng’yì croaked.“I take this bargain.”
Lan found herself rooted to where she was, unable to move and unable to cry out, unable to do anything but watch the events of history unfold before her. When the Last Kingdom had fallen at the hands of conquerors, she had alwaysimagined a defiant emperor making his stand against the invaders and fighting to his last breath.
But the Last Kingdom had fallen by its own crown prince’s hands. A prince who had stolen his family’s power and hidden himself in a life of luxury while his kingdom suffered. A prince who reaped the souls of his own people in order to maintain his own.
The emperor’s skin began to glow, as though a fire burned within him. Flames of qì leapt from his skin to Hóng’yì’s, wreathing his body. The boy’s mouth was open, his head thrown back in a scream that echoed across worlds; a scream that melded into the laughter of a being more ancient than time itself.
In the throes of his death, Emperor Shuò’lóng’s eyes flew open—and this time, they were clear, black, rheumy. Unmistakably human, unmistakably his.
The dying emperor of the Last Kingdom looked at his son. He grasped Hóng’yì’s face in his hands with surprising strength. With the last of his breath, he spoke a single word as he pressed his fingers to his son’s forehead.
“Godslayer.”
The chamber was burning now, black plumes of acrid smoke billowing as fire licked up the gilded walls, melted the jade and lapis, and blackened the rosewood floors.
The cinnabar eye painted on the emperor’s forehead had begun to glow. Qì bloomed from it, spilling upward into a series of indecipherable strokes within a single circle. Beginning to end. Within, Lan could feel thousands, tens of thousands, of layers of qì moving, as though each stroke held an entire world, multitudes of lifetimes.
A Seal.
The Godslayer was no sword, no arrow, no blade; it was aSeal.And unlike everything else here, she could feel energiespulsing from it because it was real, and it was here, conjured in this memory within the prince’s mind. The emperors had stored the secrets to the Godslayer in their minds, passing it on from generation to generation and ensuring that it could never be found by those unpracticed in the Art of the Mind.
Lan reached forward and touched a finger to the Seal.
It was as though she’d plunged through a river of time. She was falling, falling through a night of stars, tumbling through space and time and drowning in qì. The stars swirled around her, and she was watching the first shaman practitioners of the Ninety-Nine Clans raise their hands to the skies as they prayed to the gods…saw the shape of a great tortoise move between clouds in the night…the moon weep light that reared into a silver dragon…shooting stars fall like ash and bloom into a blue tiger…and the fiery light of the sun spread wings and fly as a phoenix…. She saw fires and floods and earthquakes rage, heard the screams of the dying and the terror of the living…saw hundreds of practitioners gather, hands and bodies weaving in a dance…saw the Four Demon Gods bend their heads toward one shaman, and heard them heave great, rolling sighs of relief as their forms began to unravel….
A blinding flash of light, and the scene collapsed as Hóng’yì’s memory dissipated.
The world surged back in a rush of fire and darkness—only this time it was real: the flames singeing her face, scorching the earth, burning across the entire sky. Zen knelt in the midst of it all, under relentless assault of Hóng’yì’s Art of the Mind; without his command, the Black Tortoise had retreated to a small sliver of darkness in the western sky.
Someone shouted Lan’s name. A figure appeared before her, curved dao flashing and red sleeve billowing in a dance of war. Yeshin Noro Dilaya conjured defensive Seals with the tip of Falcon’s Claw, raising them to shield Lan and Tai from theunbearable demonic qì and flames rolling from Hóng’yì and the Crimson Phoenix as they bore down on Zen.
“Sòng-godsdamned-Lián!”Dilaya roared.“Get…up!”
Lan pushed herself onto her feet. The heat was suffocating as she gripped her ocarina and looked into the core of the Crimson Phoenix.
She had seen the Godslayer. That did not mean she could conjure it. The Seal was undoubtedly the most complicated she had come across in the short time she had spent learning practitioning. She had the feeling it was less of a Seal than somethingalive,a core of energies older than this world and more expansive than the sky. There was, somehow,timecaptured within, a story of centuries and dynasties held in the Seal’s currents of qì.
I have to try.
In front of her, Dilaya screamed as a wall of flame slipped through her defenses. She stumbled back, eyes watering, sweat pouring down her face.
Farther out, Zen knelt, unmoving, his hands clapped over his temples. The Black Tortoise’s darkness was becoming devoured by the Crimson Phoenix’s flame.
Lan remembered the grandmaster’s—herfather’s—words before his death, rain trickling down his bloodied cheeks and his eyes fluttering.The Demon Gods were never meant to be wielded without a check to their power.
“Dilaya!”she shouted. “Cover me, just a while longer!”
