No—pork bunsin hand.
A laugh welled up in his chest, replacing the sharp ache. The Gate Seal blurred before him, and with a wave of his hand, he closed it.
The image of the courtyard house vanished. A dozen or so paces away were frozen cliffs; beyond yawned darkness and a glittering landscape of ice and snow.
He made his way back to the Palace of Eternal Peace, empty now but for the ghosts of his ancestors long-gone…and the undead demonic practitioners that lay buried beneath its stone floors, waiting over a hundred cycles for the day they would rise again.
Today, their wait had come to an end.
Snow camellias bloom only at winter’s solstice and signify the union of lovers into death and beyond.
—Medicine Master Zur’mkhar Rdo’rje,Herbologist’s Records of the Middle Kingdom
Lan woke the Shaklahira court and told them of the plan. The night was still dark, morning a few bells off as they dressed and packed their meager belongings. When they gathered in the desert, none spared a backward glance at the ruins of the old imperial rule.
The Sòng courtyard house had been too far to reach with her own qì, so Lan called upon the Silver Dragon. Given her refusal thus far to summon its power, it had remained a dormant and disconnected presence in her mind, except when she had been in danger—as per their bargain.
When the Gate Seal completed, the ice-blue eye that had cracked open inside her closed again, and the Silver Dragon dissolved its qì with what felt like an ethereal sigh before retreating back into its core.
As Lan alighted upon the fanstone paths leading to the courtyard gates, she felt as though she’d stepped back into that day her world had ended. The air held the cold bite of a northern winter, and snow covered the ground. The entire placeseemed trapped in an eternal winter, time frozen in a sheen of white.
As though it had been waiting for her ever since that day twelve cycles ago.
An ache bloomed in her throat. Time had not spared her home from its relentless claws. One foot in memory’s door, Lan gazed at the reality. Gone were the white osmanthus trees under which the orange cat had once dozed. The walls, once kept pristine, were cracked and graying; the great red gates stood ajar, bearing the bite marks of swords. Looming over them was a sign covered in ice and faded with age.
Lan wove a Seal of yáng—fire and heat—and swept it across the surface. The ice melted and characters appeared.
???
SÒNG MANOR
From behind her came sharp gasps as her friends and the former Shaklahira court members stepped through the Gate Seal.
“You—you lived…here?” Tai stammered, taking in the clear signs of faded splendor and looking at Lan.
Lived.The simple word hurt so much that, for a moment, she could not speak. She thought, instead, of a dream she had dreamt nearly every single waking second of her life in the nightmare of theafter.What might have happened if Mama had ridden back that day with different news. If life had continued without the Elantians. The Sòng Lián of that reality would have grown up in this very courtyard house, studying chess, calligraphy, painting, mathematics, and music under a horde of tutors. Mama would have taught her practitioning, perhaps through the Art of Song, and Sòng Lián would have grown upto become a part of the imperial court. She would have kept her name; Lan would never have existed.
Even as she ran through the old dream again, Lan found snarls in its tapestry. Mama would have had to hide their practitioning abilities. They would have had to keep their clan heritage and the Art of Song secret or endure a punishment worse than death at the imperial court’s hands. Perhaps Mama would have told Lan of the Order of Ten Thousand Flowers; perhaps she would still have died for their cause, and perhaps Lan would still have dedicated her life to the same mission.
No, her idyllic dream would never have existed, for the Last Kingdom had always been broken. It had only taken a foreign conquest to strip it to its rotten bones. For Lan to understand the reality of it.
“I did.” In the winter’s cold, her response unfurled from her lips in a feathery stream. “I once lived here.”
She turned her attention to the currents of qì that flowed out from the courtyard.
“Empty,” Dilaya said. “I checked already.” Still, she did not release her grip from Falcon’s Claw as she stared up at the courtyard gates.
“Not. Not empty.” Tai’s hand strayed to the silver bell at his waist. “I hear them. The ghosts.”
“Ghosts don’t count, you egg,” Dilaya replied.
Lan brushed her fingers against the ocarina at her waist, drew a breath, and walked up the steps. The gates parted at her touch, and her home opened itself to her.
The Sòng courtyard was a place lost to time and bore the marks of violence and destruction at the hands of the Elantians. Where once weeping willows had swept over ponds filled with koi, lotuses blushing on the surface, the trees were now dead, snow-covered husks bending over frozen ponds. The whiteterracotta walls that separated the front of the courtyard from the back were streaked in mud; the circular moon gate stood overhung with frozen vines. Once filled with color and life, the Sòng courtyard was now cold and empty, illuminated by the colorless light of the moon.
“This place looks like it’s been through the ghost’s door,” Dilaya sniffed. There was a crackle of qì and a spark, the scent of smoke as she snapped a fú for flame and held it up. The light only threw deeper shadows. “Well, since this is to be ourbase, might as well get to work. I’ll set up Boundary Seals and basic defenses, and we’ll rotate patrol shifts.” She gave Lan a brisknod.
Lan had, in part, told Dilaya, Tai, and the former Shaklahira court members of the plan: tonight they would launch their attack on King Alessandertown and she would face off against Erascius and the Azure Tiger. She had told them that Zen would be sending disciples of the School of the White Pines to join them.
