And who,his Demon God said slyly,decides which arts should be allowed and which should not?
Zen pushed the being’s voice away and turned his attention to where the living corpse had come from.
The belly of the obsidian tortoise yawned wide, the draft Zen had felt earlier pulling inward. It was a portal. The Seal he—his Demon God—had unlocked earlier had been some form of a Gate Seal: a Seal that opened to a different location. And inside…inside were more shadows walking with a slow, lumbering, aimless motion.Yin rolled out like waves, cold and dark and engulfing.
There were more living corpses beyond the gate. Dozens, perhaps even hundreds, more.
Wherezou shiwere found would also lie their masters’ darkest secrets.
His grip tightened on the pennant with the Mansorian Seal. Zen took a step forward.
Behind him, someone whispered his name.
He spun, Nightfire raised. He’d been so preoccupied with the gate that he hadn’t even sensed anyone’s approach. And suddenly, he realized the darkness around him had become a cloak, tight and suffocating, distorting his senses. His vision warped; the shadows twisted. There was a monster beyond, he knew; a pale thing slithering closer, ready to devour him—
“Zen? It’s me.”
He blinked. The shadows withdrew, yielding to the glimmer of a lantern. Why hadn’t he seen the light just moments before? It illuminated the face of someone familiar.
Shàn’jun came to a stop a good distance from him, hands held in a placating gesture. “Are you…are you all right?”
Zen lowered his sword. “I…” He pressed a finger to his temple. “Yes. Forgiveness. I am on guard.”
“The yin in this place is strong,” Shàn’jun said, suppressing a shudder as he glanced around. His eyes widened as they landed on the still-writhing corpse. “What—?”
Zen stepped forward, obscuring thezou shifrom Shàn’jun’s view. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “I told you to stay back until I gave word.”
“We felt disruptions to the qì and worried for you,” Shàn’jun said, lowering his head. “So I came to check.”
Worried for you.A quiet kind of ache pulsed through Zen’s chest. It was Shàn’jun’s disarming kindness that threatened to crack the armor he’d built around himself.
He couldn’t afford that.
“And they sent you, the only disciple without the ability to summon even the simplest Seal?” he said coldly. Shàn’jun hadbeen a disciple of Medicine: deft in the ability to detect and parse different strands of qì and trained in the arts of healing—but with no ability to manipulate qì like most practitioners.
Shàn’jun’s shoulders slumped slightly, but another voice spoke from behind him.
“He is not alone.”
From the shadows stepped a second figure, seeming to peel from the darkness. Zen’s grip tightened on his jiàn as the Nameless Master of Assassins came to Shàn’jun’s side, his footsteps velvet and his presence like wind. He had a face for forgetting, features so ordinarily Hin and nondescript that if Zen were to describe the man, he wouldn’t be able to pick out a single defining characteristic. Only those eyes—black and as cold as night, watching with careful blankness.
Of all the masters at the school, this was the one who had inspired something like fear in Zen.
He doesn’t know,he reminded himself.He doesn’t know.
Most people didn’t know he had killedDé’zi, the beloved grandmaster of the School of the White Pines. Except for…
Zen’s gaze slid to Shàn’jun. Another seed of fear bloomed: What would the disciples do if Shàn’jun told them Zen had murdered their grandmaster?
“Thank you,” Zen said. How long had the Nameless Master been standing there watching? “Nothing of concern here. Please wait for me with the others. I will ensure that this place is safe to inhabit.”
Zen waited until they were well out of sight before turning back to the gate. The door to the past of his ancestors and the secrets of his clan had been wedged open. The darkness awaited, beckoning him to step through.
And so Zen did.
May the Eternal Sky take my soul.
May the Great Earth take my body.
