Across the plateau was the shadow of another army: tenfold in size, all cavalry, though their horses were slender-legged, short-furred, and shivering, clearly unaccustomed to the frigid cold of the Northern Steppes. Zen nearly did a double take when he recognized the sigil—crossed sabers clutched in a falcon’s claw—flown on their flag.
The Jorshen Steel clan—that of Yeshin Noro Ulara and Dilaya, from the School of the White Pines—was here. Fightingan ancient war against his clan…before the Imperial Army destroyed both.
The Yeshin Noro matriarch heading the army raised her double sabers and screamed an order. With a rumble that seemed to emanate from the earth itself, her army charged.
Xan Tolürigin was smiling. His smile grew and grew until he tipped his head back and roared with laughter. His riders joined in until their laughter turned to cries of war.
They charged.
They rode hard at first, their bodies flattened against their surefooted steeds. Beneath their feet, against the grasses whipping past, their shadows stretched and stretched. Zen could almost taste the yin thickening in the air as the darkness grew around each Mansorian rider, rising from the ground and morphing into monsters.
As the first Mansorian rider plunged across enemy lines, his demon spread amorphous wings of shadow spanning ten men and swept over them. A swirl of darkness, and all that was left was empty saddles and screaming horses, blood slicking their fur as they skidded off-kilter without their riders.
Another sweep of a wing, a dozen more Jorshen warriors gone.
Fear was a powerful thing, and Zen watched, frozen half in terror and half in awe, as it spread across the ranks of the Jorshen army. They began to retreat as the other Mansorian riders and their demons set upon them—but by then, it was too late.
The scene pulled away, and Zen found himself back in the silent burial chamber, with the screams of the Jorshen army still ringing in his ears.
The Forty-Four,the Black Tortoise whispered.Otherwise known in your stories as the Deathriders of Mansoria. Forty-four of the most powerful demonic practitioners loyal to Xan Tolürigin. They once sweptthe plateaus of the Northern Steppes, establishing the Mansorian clan’s foothold as one of the central powers of the Last Kingdom.
Zen’s heart pounded. The Forty-Four were the magical army of his great-grandfather that Zen had been looking for. When he’d sought out the ruins of the Mansorian palace, he’d hoped only to unroot some clues as to their existence.
He hadn’t expected to find the most powerful army in history entombed beneath these very ruins.
It was as though the ancient memory he’d experienced had imbued him with an instinct that tugged him like invisible threads toward the very back of the chamber. There, in the space between two caskets, sat a great birchwood chest. Zen lay a hand on it reverently. The passage of hundreds of cycles had layered it thick with dust. Beneath it, engravings glinted in the light of his fú. The paint had faded with time, but Zen could still make out the figures: palaces in the clouds, immortals twirling in long silken sashes amidst a pantheon of gods that the Ninety-Nine Clans had worshiped, the legacy of which had passed to the Hin.
And between them—a sight that drew a sharp inhale from him—were the unmistakable forms of the Four Demon Gods. They took up the four cardinal points: the Black Tortoise of the North, the Crimson Phoenix of the South, the Silver Dragon of the East, and the Azure Tiger of the West. Immortals danced around them; the other gods mingled with them.
Zen stared at the engravings. What were the four most malevolent beings of evil doing amidst the gods traditionally worshiped by the people? His ancestors had worshiped the Black Tortoise, but he’d never thought of the Demon Gods asgods.They’d always belonged to their own classification: demonic beings with godly powers.
His heart began a drumroll. He was certain that whatever answers he sought lay in this chest.
“Open it,” he commanded his Demon God.
A flick of its qì and a Mansorian Seal scorched in the air before Zen. Symbols on the birchwood chest lit up like molten lava.
With a click, the chest unlocked.
Zen leaned forward. What he saw sent a sharp pang through him.
The chest was filled with Mansorian regalia. With shaking hands, he lifted out a brocade robe embroidered with the signature red and black flame motifs. Ornaments and headdresses made from lavish coral and turquoise beads; jade rings and other jewels; bronze bells and iron spears—rich parts of his heritage that he had never seen before. Zen had grown up wandering the steppes with what remained of his clan. His parents had dressed in coarse, practical clothing suited to hard labor, and sturdy sheepskin boots that guarded against the cold and had a sharp grip in case they needed to flee.
He held up a sparkling headdress. He tried to conjure his mother’s face and how beautiful she might have looked in this, but he found that he could barely remember her features—just the ghost of her laugh, the depths of her gaze. An impression of her as faded as the snows with the turn of seasons.
Zen carefully set the headdress aside and reached back in. His finger scraped against something hard in the chest. As he lifted it out, he knew it was different from the other items.
The tome had been produced with care many dynasties past and was well preserved. Gold stitching lined its edges, and the title was inscribed with black silk intertwined with the feathers of a red-crowned crane. Zen traced the looping syllabary of the Mansorian scripture and found that he knew these characters.
Classic of Gods and Demons
A shiver ran up his spine. He’d never heard of this classic before. There were only four classics known to all schools of practitioning—known, that is, to living memory and the masters who had survived the turn of the Middle Kingdom into the Last Kingdom.
He held up his fú of light and swiped a finger along the pages of the book. He was about to crack it open when there was movement in the corners of his eyes.
Clutching the tome, Zen pivoted to face the open doors. In the darkness, he found a set of eyes glowing as they watched him. A warped face, ademon’sface, teeth glinting and tongue lolling as it grinned at him from the shadows.
Zen did not hesitate. A Seal sparked to life at his fingers; he sent a blast of flame at the intruder.
