Chapter 5
Shu Zhuang was not a man easily dismayed by setbacks. He reflected on this as he looked up at the ridiculously gilded ceremonial dagger, still wet from the last victim. He could see, out of the corner of his eye, two corpses against the wall: an older man in shabby clothes and a girl that looked to be about seven years old. He had seen a lot in his life, and he knew that patience and fortitude tended to win out in the end. Unfortunately, he wasn’t entirely certain as to how these virtues applied in the present circumstances.
An hour ago, he had been looking for an appropriate plaza or amphitheater to begin his usual labor. It had become habit; he did it without thinking, ambling through the decaying streets of Varsi. Thus he did not notice the seven men gathering around him until he looked up and realized that he was quite surrounded.
Zhuang recalled muttering something to the effect of, “Aren’t you that ugly brute that was just thrashed by my teammate a couple hours ago?”
Now, as he lay on the crude altar formed from a slab of fallen masonry, he was fairly certain that he could have chosen a better introduction. He was also reasonably sure that one of the men behind him was handy with a sap. The next thing he had seen was this narrow, windowless room, two dead bodies, and the same goat-head grinning at him with a knife in hand.
It was truly a setback, but old Zhuang knew that fate never closed a door without opening a window, that clouds were always followed by the sun. At that moment, however, he was working in a much hastier fashion than he was preferred while trying to think of how one of his vast store of aphorisms might possibly save his life.
Finding Toruna was no easy task.
First of all, Yao Ye was inconsolable. She ate until there was nothing left, and then she seemed to stop moving completely, staring forward, occasionally sniffing, but not responding to their questions. Selara was forced to bodily carry her back to her room, if only to keep her from being exposed to the elements or stolen by slavers.
Next came the task of finding their leader. Wing and Selara went from inn to inn, bar to bar, throughout the small city, asking for the woman with dark skin and obsidian hair. They were used to being the strangest and most interesting people everywhere they went (outside of the environs of God Crossing), but even so, none had heard of or seen Toruna.
After five hours of searching, in an act bred of desperation rather than calculation, they wandered from the cleaner, better maintained districts of Varsi into the poorer, seedier side of the city. At a large building, recently whitewashed and decorated with red-painted mares prancing in relief over the door and red paper lanterns hanging from its windows, Wing finally heard news of her.
An older woman with impeccably coifed hair and a black linen kimono told him, “Yes, she has been our guest for the last two days. However...”
Zhou Wing immediately pushed past her at a run, muttering his thanks. He entered the atrium, which consisted of a well lit courtyard with a koi pond and stone lanterns, and spun around looking for the nearest door. He shouted behind himself, “Which room is she in?”
“Gentle sir, if you could please wait here then I could send a girl up...”
Selara followed him into the building more slowly, glancing about herself suspiciously. Wing stomped his foot and shouted at the top of his voice, “Damn it, this is a matter of life and death. Tell us where she is!”
The woman’s face seemed to harden slightly, and she responded curtly, “Second floor on the north side.”
The amalgam ran up the stairs to the second floor, which was shielded from the courtyard by translucent paper walls. When he reached the door, he slid it aside with a twist of his arm and burst into the room.
Toruna was standing with her back to him, facing a low, cushioned mat covered with tan silk sheets, ivory pillows, and two young women, apparently sleeping soundly. The room was lit by paper windows that afforded weak yellow light. The walls of the room were tastefully decorated in flowing, almost abstract paintings with large inky brushstrokes, and the floor was covered in tatami mats. Toruna was nude.
“Ah...” Wing began.
She turned her head to one side without entirely looking at him. “I assume you have an excellent reason for being here?”
“I... Yes...”
At that moment Selara caught up with him and stood in the doorway. She averted her eyes and said over his shoulder, “We’ve bad news. There is an abyssal assassin loose in the Marukan, a skilled one, and she knows the details of our amalgamation and deployment. Our team has been compromised.”
Toruna walked over to a teak dresser on one side of the room and removed a silk robe. She proceeded to pull this onto her shoulders. “We knew this would happen eventually. What do you want me to do? I’m on a little vacation of my own, you know.”
Wing stammered, “Well, shouldn’t we return to the manse? It’s not safe here.”
“It never is. Listen, we knew about this issue from the first day that the teams were proposed. We’ve always been vulnerable to truly exalted assassins, and we always will be. It can’t be helped. It’s just one of the dangers we accepted when we donned their seal of authority.”
“But... so there’s nothing we can do to protect ourselves?”
“None of us can, except Yao Ye. She’s incapable of being attacked from surprise. Even so, it won’t help her if a deathknight decides to really wants to kill her.”
Wing swallowed. “Oh.” One of the girls in the bed stirred and muttered something in Firetongue.
Toruna eyed him for a moment. “Is there anything else you needed, Wing?”
“No... that is, unless you’ve seen Shu Zhuang anywhere?”
Toruna lead him to the door with a gentle push to his shoulder. “Ye is the one that needs to be watched. Old stump can take care of himself.”
The man with the head of a goat held in one hand a book bound with two plates of steel. He stared at it furiously and began to chant, “Hear us, Shraladra Long-fingers, queen of the tentacled grey mysteries, goddess of disproportionate vengeance. By the tongue of the ancients we summon thee, by thy ninety-three sutras and thirty-seven vedas!”
Then he began making noises. They were curiously guttural, full of unexpected starts and stops, sounds like the chewing and the grinding of teeth. “Shemshakrum dajesh Percklrjrm Orrorro sham! Djinblishtarnao sabrokk okk tunleth. Sprogganaw! Nanneth sprogganaw!”
Shu Zhuang had closed his eyes in preparation for being perforated with an edged implement, but he risked a half-lidded peek. He watched as a young man with a wispy teenage beard approached the beastman from behind and tried to peer over his shoulder. He whispered, just loudly enough for the Daybringer to hear, “Gubble, You sure about...”
“Quiet!”
“If it doesn’t work this time, are we going to have to find...”
“Excuse me...” Shu Zhuang twisted his neck awkwardly so that he could face his captors.
Gubble glowered at him and began chanting again. “Hashish! Traneram! Korzjlrrk blix blix blix!”
“Excuse me...” Zhuang began again, “But am I right in thinking that none of you speak Old Realm?”
“I’m just saying, be careful. I don’t know what kind of charms he used in that fight, but he moved faster than I could follow. I think the boy must have hit him five or six times before he landed. It was terrifying.”
Selara nodded her head. “Must be a spirit charm... if it’s what I think it is, fighting Salvar is going to be a lot harder than I thought. Seven devils and five dragons...”
“Hmm...”
They reached their inn and looked up. Selara frowned and looked at the door. “I don’t want to go up there.”
“Neither do I.” Wing scratched his jaw.
“Don’t worry about her. I think I’m going to see if any more of the fights are scheduled for today. I don’t want any more surprises like Kuyen’s ‘Razor Palms’.”
“Yeah.” He looked back at the door to the inn and kicked at a cobble stone. “I think I’ll... be around here, maybe. I should see if there’s any work in this city for me. Yes.”
“There’s always sick people.” She waved to him as she strode towards the voivode’s tower. He watched her leave, then sighed to himself. He opened the door and walked up the stairs. He walked down a short, poorly lit hall, then knocked on a heavy wooden door.
“Yao Ye?” He looked up at the ceiling, then looked down again, slightly disgusted by the accumulated soot. There was no answer.
He sighed again, closed his eyes, and muttered, “After this, we’re even.”
He opened the door.
She was lying as they had left her, curled in ball on her bed, facing the window. It was quite dark in the room. The only window was shuttered closed. As Zhou Wing closed the door, it became so dim he had trouble moving; he banged his shins against the foot of the bed as he moved to open the window. He said, blithely, “It’s a little hard to see in here. There, that’s better.”
Turning, he could he see her face was pale and blank. She stared past him at the wall. Wing looked at the wall, then looked back at her. He scraped the floor with one foot, then walked up to the bed and sat at its foot. “We talked to Toruna... but she said, well, not much, really.”
“Why her?”
Wing turned and looked at her. “What was that?”
Her lips were pushed to one side because of the angle that her face was pushed against the bed. They barely moved as she said, “Why not me? What’s wrong with Yao Ye?”
Wing opened his mouth, about to give a succinct but comprehensive answer to the question, but he closed it again an instant later. He remembered the lie he had told Willow Leaf when she struggled against the plague, and he also remembered how certain comments made while shopping the previous day had been taken to heart, and he decided, much to his chagrin, that perhaps this particularly question should not be answered with the truth. He offered a reasonable interpretation instead.
“Well, I’m not really certain as to what you’re talking about, but my guess would be you’re referring to that deathknight assassin...”
“Kena. Such a stupid name.”
“Right. Well, she obviously had magical powers of seduction. She was an abyssal exalted, right?”
“Why can’t I have magical powers of seduction.” She rolled over and looked at Wing as though expecting an answer.
“Ye, let me ask you something serious.” He ran his hand through his wispy grey hair and scratched the back of his head. “You know about the sorceress compulsion that binds us to him, the bond of loyalty. Even I catch myself having strange thoughts about him...”
“He’s not your type.”
“...shut up. I mean, are you sure that you even like this wizard? That it’s not just the magic affecting you? He’s really not all that handsome, or tall, has no hair, can’t finish a sentence to save his life, spends all of his time with elementals and constructs, and apparently dates dead women.” He threw up his hands in exasperation.
Yao Ye pursed her lips and blew, her eyes taking on a faraway cast. “No. I wish it was. I guess as soon as I first met them, he and his sister, I wanted to be a part of their family. The way they take care of each other... and he’s so gentle. You can tell that it hurts him to even think about putting someone else in danger, or causing them trouble. And he’s so different from the other sunnies... he never bothers with putting on a show, as if he didn’t care what other people thought of him, didn’t care if they respected him. I just feel safe around him... I know that he would...”
“Okay. Right.” Wing stood and stepped over to the open window and stuck his head out, looking down at the street. “So, I was thinking about grabbing some lunch. You know, leaving the room and and talking about something else. Speaking of which, have you seen Shu Zhuang?”
His bonds loosed, Zhuang sat on the altar with the book in his lap. “You see, this actually is the illustration here. That may have been why you were having so much trouble pronouncing it.”
Seven brutes in various states of injury surrounded him and nodded their heads, as though they had suspected as much. Gubble the goat-head, their leader, muttered to him, “Don’t think this gets you out of being our sacrifice. We saw you with the others.”
“Quite. But why exactly are you so set on summoning a mid-level deity to kill us, anyway? There are certainly easier methods.”
“No one can fight like that green demon. She’s protected by foul magic! How else could she defeat us on our own turf?” His allies nodded their heads. “This insult will not stand. She and all the Daybringers will pay for it, and pay in blood. Three of our number will never walk again, and we lost almost a dozen that are afraid to even leave their homes. The black mark gang is broken! Oh, she’ll pay, all right.”
“Hmm. So you were all there. Well, since you’ve been kind enough to untie me, I’ll give you some advice. Human sacrifices do not please Shraladra. She is a vengeance deity. Killing people to get her attention is like breaking bones to summon a doctor; it just gives them more business.”
“Hmm... then what does please her? Tell us or we will kill you anyway!”
They looked sternly at Shu Zhuang. He bowed his head, as though in submission, but inwardly a smile formed in his heart. He decided to take a vacation of his own.
As they walked through the city, Wing asked her, “You should do something to take your mind off of it. It doesn’t have to be good.”
“That’s just it... I’m out of money, so I can’t eat. I’m not allowed to fight. I don’t know what to do. I guess I could die or something.” She made a half-hearted stabbing motion towards her throat and stuck out her tongue.
“Well, what did you do before you joined the army?”
“That’s very personal and none of your business.”
“Come on,” he ducked to one side as a pair of immaculate monks passed them, eyeing them with evident hatred. “Were you born with a sword in your hand?”
She walked out into the center of the street and put both of her hands over her head in the shape of an inverted V. “No, I wasn’t. Since you’re so curious, I’ll tell you: Yao Ye was a farmer. A rice farmer.”
He looked at her incredulously. “Really? Not even a horse herder or an apprentice in a smithy?”
“Well, I wasn’t always... I mean... that was before...” She stopped in mid sentence and began to make a strange face and grabbed her stomach with one hand.
Zhou Wing quickly interjected, “You know, I was a wheelwright’s apprentice. Do you believe it? I was hoping to move to Celeren and start my own shop before the shadowlands started growing to close to my village. What do you think, would you buy a Wing wheel?”
She looked at him and laughed. “I don’t think you’d be any good at selling things. To people.” She sighed and bumped into him as they walked. “Thanks, Wing, by the way. You’ve been a good friend today.”
“Oh, well...” The blood came to his pale cheeks, and he was at a loss for words.
“Better than that, you’ve been a great girl-friend today.”
“Ah...”
“Zhou Wing the big girl-friend,” she continued, her voice raised as though making an announcement to the city. “Zhou Wing, the big girl-friend doctor-man. Stinky Zhou Wing, the big girl-friend doctor-man with the bedside manner of a warthog that’s been...”
“We were looking for a place to eat, right?”
She sighed and slumped over. “I told you, I’m out of money. I guess I’ll just have to wait until we get back to the Plum Blossom Retreat.”
“Well, I think I have a little money on me. It should be enough for a couple bowls of rice.”
“Pheasant, lightly braised. Plum wine... and peach brandy. Apricots, grapes, nectarines, and cherries. Venison stew and polenta with aged cheese. Figs, boar, and... wide noodle soup. And a bag of flour.”
Shu Zhuang nodded his head sagaciously. The seven thugs looked at him with shock and dismay. Gubble started in, “That will cost... a fortune!”
“Revenge doesn’t come cheap. If you really want to make the green demon suffer, you will first have to woo this deity to your cause. You will need to leave this offering in a room with no windows, completely sealed for the entire night, with a feather bed. And one of you will need to be present inside the room for the entire night.”
“What’s the bed for?”
“Why, so that she can recline after she dines, of course.”
The youth with a wispy beard (Jeggins, as Zhuang had learned), raised his hand and said, “Well, I’ll volunteer to stay in the room with all that food and the nice bed. Sure!”
The older man nodded his head, the many crags and wrinkles of his bark-brown face hiding any expression that might lay buried there. “You’re a brave lad. Goodbye, son.”
Gubble grabbed the color of his robe. “You’re not going anywhere yet, devil.”
“Of course not. I was just preparing myself for Jeggins’ departure.”
“Where’s he going?”
“Well, most likely back into the cycle of reincarnation. Has he lead an honorable and just life?”
The youth cried out and backed up from the group. “I’m not going to die tonight, am I?”
Zhuang reached out and slapped him on the thigh. “That’s the spirit. She’ll probably only drink a little of your blood before she nods off.”
Gubble shook him again. “Tell us the truth! What happens to the man we seal in there?”
“Well, anyone left with the offering is considered part of the offering. She is terribly fond of man blood. It’s the seasoning she prefers above all others for her meals.”
The beastman looked at him suspiciously, then called his six compatriots to him and left the room. Zhuang looked uncomfortably at the two dead people lying against the wall with their throats slit. He heard them talking conspiratorially for a few moments outside before they returned.
Gubble announced, “We’ve decided on the sleeping arrangements for tonight. I hope you enjoy your stay with Longfingers.”
Zhuang did his best to appear dismayed.
Thus it was that as the rest of the Daybringers vaguely searched for him, Shu Zhuang was living quite at ease and with few worries, save that eventually his captors might expect him to procure an immortal for their personal use.
The next day, Selara returned to the ring for her quarterfinal match against Salvar Blackhands. Ye and Wing watched from the sidelines amongst a somewhat larger crowd that day; nearly four hundred people were packed into the square to see the two strangers fight. Opinion seemed divided as to who should win; the rising star of the martial arts world from Nexus, or the green newcomer from nearby God Crossing.
They met before the fight in the center of the ring to exchange words.
“I don’t care about fighting you, construct, I’m only here for the immaculate.”
“That’s my line,” she muttered back at him.
“Well then, it shouldn’t matter who wins today after all. How about we put a little wager on this fight.” He leered at her with a shady grin.
“All right. What terms did you have in mind?”
He looked at the spectators for a moment until he caught sight of Yao Ye. “Her. If I win, you arrange it so that she’ll have dinner with me tomorrow night.”
Selara turned to look at her teammate, who looked back at them with confusion. “All right,” she said. “And if I win, you have to feed her tomorrow night.”
“Wait, isn’t that what I just said?”
“Not exactly.”
Salvar shrugged his shoulders and stepped away from her, striding across the sun-baked stones to the opposite side of the stone platform. He turned over his shoulder to wink at Yao Ye with a toothy smile.
Ye’s face turned a darker shade of red. She turned to Zhou Wing. “What was that about?”
“Maybe he had something in his eye?”
“Oh, he’s going to, all right. In three days. Oh, I hate compulsion spells!” She stamped her foot with vehement force.
“Shh... it’s already starting.”
The two martial artists had adopted their stances, but neither of them attacked. Selara’s feet began to weave in a sinuous box-step, winding in and out of a flowing pattern as she slid almost imperceptibly clockwise around the arena. Salvar blackhand’s steps were heavier, but no less cautious as he maintained the distance between them. The crowd shouted their encouragements in a thunderous roar; sweat trickled down their faces and backs in the noonday sun. Only the small immaculate presence, some eight monks, standing near the tower in a line, remained aloof. Even the voivode’s honor guard was shouting for blood.
“Is this your seven devils and five dragons style? Are you going to pace me to death?” Selara taunted.
“I wanted to see the snake style in action before I utterly broke you. Nothing can defeat the combined might of enlightened martial arts and the Principal of Motion!”
“We have a saying about martial artists like you in the Marukan: One Trick Pony.”
“How dare you! I’m more Marukan than you’ll ever be!” With that he lunged across the pavement with his five-dragon fist.
Selara received the blow on her sternum, her wind knocked out of her for a moment, but as his second fist flew upward in an uppercut, she caught his fist with a closing gate block. “Watch your ass, kid.” She shouted as she spun around him to plant an elbow in his kidney.
Staggered slightly by the blow, he turned face her in the cat stance. “You know some technique, girl, but I can’t be beat. This is all just a game to me!” He launched forward with a sweep, followed by a second sweep from his trailing leg. The second one caught her in the ankle, but she danced around him using the unicorn steps, twisting at the last moment to deliver a palm strike followed by a viper fang slash. Off balance from the first blow, the second brought blood to his skin.
“If this is a game, then who is winning?” she laughed as she drew back her red-stained fingers beside her face. Salvar smiled and began another flurry of blows.
The audience was going wild with excitement. Pass after pass they traded blows. Selara’s superior constitution and essence hardened frame gave her a definite edge, but she received many blows, and they took their toll even on her thick skin. Salvar took his blows laughingly, reveling in his injuries. At length he stopped and faced her with an odd smile on his face.
“Well, your skills do you credit, construct, but the fight is over. There is no way that you can defeat...”
“I heard you the first time. What you don’t know is that I’ve only been using 60% of my power thus far.”
“That’s not possible!”
“See for yourself. How will you unleash your vaunted charms against me when you can’t even walk?”
Salvar had made the mistake of pausing the fight to gloat over his imminent victory; Selara seized the chance using the cobra’s striking speed to launch three stinging strikes to his leading leg. The precisely aimed bites from her fingers left paired bloody holes in three places along his inner thigh. Salvar was forced to drop to the mat, clutching his leg to keep his heart’s blood from draining onto the mat.
Selara looked down at him as his eyes fluttered. “What was it, seven weevils and five ducks? You’ll have to show it to me some other time... after I win this tournament.”
The crowd was roaring; people were stamping their feet and shouting her name, but just above the waves of sound, she heard a familiar voice crying out. Selara turned to where her teammates were, and as she did she saw both Zhou Wing and Yao Ye pointing towards the roof tops.
Then she saw the arrows. There must have been twenty already in the air, cresting over the roof of a large residence, and another volley was on its way. Selara summoned her essence about her once more, preparing to make a last ditch defense, but knowing that she could not catch so many (and what of Salvar, who couldn’t move at all?) However, in the last instant, she saw a flash of black essence before her eyes. It slowed improbably to a halt before her, then rebounded in a pentagram shape for the length time it takes a woman to inhale and exhale three times.
When the object fell to the ground, there were no more arrows in the air, and before her on the stone was a smoking rice hat, rather the worse for wear at the moment.
Shu Zhuang’s routine was arranged in such a way as to cause him as little trouble as possible. At night he would be sealed in a room with choice food and drink, he would eat his fill, sleep on a feather bed, rise at dawn for more food, gently powder his face and hands with a little flour, and then bang on the door until they let him out. As each day passed he appeared to grow paler, but he knew he couldn’t keep up the ruse forever. In the meantime, there was of course his teaching.
“By the end of this week I should be able to conduct the final ceremony. Shraladra Longfingers, queen of the tentacled grey mysteries, goddess of disproportionate vengeance, is slowly being won over to your cause. I only hope that I will live long enough to see it.”
Gubble smirked at him. “No great loss, either way. However she kills you will satisfy me, so long as this Selara dies a slow and painful death.”
Shu Zhuang nodded and turned away from his captors. “However, to perform the ceremony, you will need a few more preparations.”
The beastman frowned. Already his gang of thieves and mercenaries, thugs and brigands had been reduced to a handful by Selara’s kung fu, and now their coffers were being emptied supplying this god with choice offerings. “What is it now? No more pastries! Even a celestial deity can’t eat that much raspberry pie.”
“I quite agree. No, one of the problems with your first attempt was in that you failed to take into account Shraladra’s age.”
“Her age? What does that have to do with anything?”
“She’s been around since the beginning of the first age, you understand, over five millennia, and that does begin to show, even in a god. I doubt she could even hear your chanting.”
“She’s deaf?”
“Not entirely. You see, I will need a choir. Don’t worry, they’ll each receive a copy of the text for the summoning ritual, and after a little training they’ll be perfect for attracting her attention.”
“Hmm... how many will you need?”
“As many as you can find. Children will be best, since they learn more quickly. They’ll never know what the ritual is used for, and if they don’t see you and your gang while I’m instructing them, they’ll never be the wiser as to our real goal.”
Thus Shu Zhuang was still able to continue to spread the sun’s light, and some fifty children without anything better to do in their afternoons were taught to read and write under the auspices of allegedly teaching them how to perform black thaumaturgical rituals. Jeggins and the other members of the gang were delighted at this seeming progress, but Gubble began to suspect that he was being taken in when he noticed how jolly Shu Zhuang seemed every morning, despite being slowly drained of his life’s blood.
On the day of Selara’s fight with Salvar, Gubble approached him in the middle of one of his classes. “Ready or not, the ritual begins tomorrow. Otherwise, we try it my way again.”
Zhou Wing followed her as far as the temple. “Be careful in there Selara. I doubt that they’ll ambush you in their own temple after inviting you, but I don’t trust this monk.”
Selara looked up at the concrete facade. “He’s just trying to psych me out. He knows as well as I do what tomorrow’s fight means, and I’m willing to bet he’ll do anything to make sure he wins. He’ll find I’m tougher than most of these temperamental martial artists. I’ll be the one to come out of this smiling, trust me.” She flashed her one silver eye at him.
Wing shook his head. “I don’t know... Shin Jin Twelfth Son is well known for the strength of his Cha No Yu ceremony. Some say it’s almost as deadly as his water dragon form.”
“Cha No what? I thought you said the invitation was some kind of tea party.”
“Ah... you know, don’t worry about it.”
Selara marched up the steps of the immaculate temple and into the atrium. It was a clean, well lit courtyard with a meditating pool surrounded by stone benches and pillared walkways. She started as she realized she had just walked past two aged monks flanking the door; they stared past her impassively.
“Hello?” She called out to the empty courtyard. In the distance she could hear the sound of a class in progress, the regular exhalations of twenty students performing katas simultaneously. She strode out to the pool and kicked a rock into it. She heard a noise like a muffled gasp behind her, but she ignored it. She shouted again, “This is Selara, and I’m here about the tournament. Is this some kind of game? Are you hiding from me, Jin? I warn you, I play rough...”
Then she heard the muffled sound of sandaled feet running in small, quick steps down an interior corridor. A younger monk stepped out of one of the adjoining passageways, looking at a loss for breath. He gave a quick bow and said to her, “Shin Jin will see you now, if you will please follow me.
He lead her at a rather fast walk through the temple to a small room with a matted floor. The room was sparse, with a single sutra in old realm running down a kakemono on the back wall, written in black ink with a red ink border. In the center of the floor were the implements for the tea ceremony: the kama, the mizusashi, the futaoki, chashaku, fukusa, chawan, and natsumes. Seated behind them in the lotus position, dressed in the same robe and wooden beads that she had seen him in when they first met at the brawl, was Shin Jin Twelfth Son. His eyes were half lidded, but his lips were tight.
“Please, have a seat, Selara. I was nearly ready for your arrival.”
The subtle insult was clearly lost on her. “I’ll stand, thanks,” she said suspiciously.
“It is customary in the tea ceremony...” he began.
“Oh, I don’t drink tea. Sake is fine for me, or even better, beer.” She scratched at her back and paced the far wall.
“Ah. Madame. This is an immaculate monastery. We neither possess nor serve strong drink here.”
“Damn. By the sun I hate immaculates.” She spat on the floor as she said this, then looked up at him and added, “nothing personal.”
Shin Jin Twelfth Son’s face turned a livid shade of purple. His eyes flew wide open as he looked at the spit on the floor, and for a moment it seemed that the final match of the competition would begin a day early and under rather inauspicious conditions, but he managed to calm himself through no little effort. He began serving himself tea.
“Well then, since the barest semblance of civil behavior have been set aside, let me speak to you frankly...” he lifted his natsume to his lips in his giant, powerful hand.
“Me first. Did you have anything to do with that attack during the last match?”
He coughed politely to hide his embarrassment at her behavior. “I was not personally involved, no...”
“All right.”
“...but, since we are being so honest with one another, I’d have to say that the act of assassinating the sorcerously forged pets of an anathema sorcerer, even through the most dishonest of means, would be considered a righteous act in most interpretations of the immaculate texts.” His thick black brows arched slightly as he finished his statement.
“So, wait, you did do it? What are you saying?” She looked at him with irritated confusion on her face.
“I’m saying that I didn’t, but I wouldn’t mind doing it. It seems, however, that I don’t have to. We have many followers in this city who understand the danger that you and your masters pose to the well-being of creation. Now, I’d like to ask you a question, my hot-blooded guest. What do you hope to gain by winning this tournament? You’ve shown no interest in the martial arts world in the past; no one has heard of you. Why present yourself at such a premiere event when you apparently care so little for the recognition that is its chief prize?”
“I’m here because you’re here.”
Unphased, he began preparing himself a second cup of tea, gently wisking in another scoop of Jinba-Ittai. “Do you mean that in the general sense? Our order has been in this city for nearly three hundred years. As it is said in the holy texts, there is...”
“If you can’t use your own words, don’t bother. You know as well as I do that I don’t give a damn about your scripture and I’ve never read it, so save it for some other sucker. I’m here because this town needs our help and we need them too. And until you’re put in your place, I don’t think it’ll happen.”
“You’ll find that the voivode is a deeply spiritual man, despite his somewhat rough exterior. He’ll not be so easily swayed to heresy. And besides, you haven’t won yet. No matter how highly you esteem your prowess, you’ll find that your heretical martial arts are no match for the water dragon.”
Selara grinned back at him maliciously, her hands folded in front of her chest. “You’re damn right it’s not. It’s a good thing I happen to know that you haven’t finished mastering the style, Shin Jin Twelfth Son.”
This time she was nearly certain that we was going to try and kill her, so Selara moved quickly to the door. “I’ll let myself out, thanks. Tomorrow.”
Shin Jin stood and crossed his massive arms before his chest. “Yes... tomorrow.”
This is how the ceremony was prepared and executed.
The city of Varsi is older, in fact, than many of its inhabitants know. By descending through the cellars of a certain restaurant specializing in Chantan cuisine, past the wine barrels and a pile of broken furniture, it is possible to enter the sewers that flow at a sharp descent down to the river. Through those same sewers there are certain long forgotten vaults, and in one of these vaults is a strange structure indeed. In a dry room there is a perfectly cylindrical pillar in its center, apparently supporting the concrete ceiling. It is approximately two yards wide, and on one side it has a narrow window. The sides of this narrow window have been chiseled out to make the entrance just large enough for a man. Entering this pillar, one finds a set of stairs leading downward. There is no light there save that which one brings. At the base of this staircase, some two hundred feet down, is an iron door.
This iron door leads into a great cavernous space, for the staircase was once a tower, and the cavern once the nave of a grand cathedral.
All of the windows were bricked in, and the children (whimpering in terror now) were made to fill a shadowy choir two dozen feet above the main level. Each had a candle and a script. Between two smokey torches, Shu Zhuang stood before a black altar, while the black mark gang stood two paces behind him, watching his every motion. He opened the foul tome before himself, closed his eyes, and stood absolutely still.
After ten minutes of silence, Gubble became impatient. “What are you waiting for? Begin!” he shouted, stamping his foot. His compatriots snarled their own threats, rubbing their shoulders to keep off the chill.
“Just a few more moments...” Zhuang whispered, raising a finger to his lips.
Gubble strode past him to the base of the choir. “I’ll wait no longer. Begin the ritual, choir!”
The children looked at one another, then looked down at their sheets. With stammering lips, they began to recite their lessons.
“Holy is the unconquered son, and holy his servants the solar exalted. Their work be blessed, for theirs is the mandate of heaven. Holy are the solar exalted, and holy their servants, exalted and mortal, amalgamated and free...”
Gubble turned around, his animal features contorted in utter hatred. “What ceremony is this?”
Shu Zhuang closed the book and began walking to his left, toward the wall. “The ceremony is completed. Children, heads down.”
As Shu Zhuang stepped away, Gubble drew his long dagger and prepared to follow him. At that moment, however, he noticed that his six compatriots were gone.
“Jeggins! Brick! Surimasu!” He called out, straining his eyes to peer into the darkness. He grabbed one of the torches from its stand and walked out into the nave, looking amongst the stone pews. There was no trace of them, no signs of struggle or danger at all. He spun around to face back towards the empty choir and Shu Zhuang, but before him stood a nine foot tall woman dressed in a long, flowing robe of gray that covered her hands and feet. Her long, iron-gray hair was pulled back from her thin, angular face.
“Who...”
Her voice was as soft as lamb’s wool as she spoke. “You were expecting someone else?”
There was no sound, and none of the spectators could see how exactly his limbs were dispersed and then drawn into the folds of her robes. It happened in an instant. Gubble was gone.
Shraladra Longfingers turned and drifted over the floor to where Shu Zhuang was pressed against the wall. As she did so, she diminished in size until they were nearly of equal height.
“The blood of the two you spoke of has been repaid in full. You play a dangerous game, old stump. How do you know someone else will not seek revenge against you?”
He spoke haltingly. “But I didn’t kill those men, did I?”
A razor smile answered him. She said, “Clever till the end. Thank you for the lovely ritual last night. I look forward to our next meeting.”
Zhuang bowed his head, and as he did so a bead of sweat (thick and white with his flour make up) fell to the floor.
And she was gone.
The amalgam breathed a long sigh of relief, then waved his hand at the choir. “Come children, back to the surface. Lessons will continue tomorrow at the usual time.”
Thirty koto drummers worked in unison, filling the square with a rumbling, jarring, beat. A thousand spectators filled the square, lining the rooftops, hanging out the windows of adjacent buildings and standing on each other’s shoulders. Even so, more people continued to try to push their way in. They had to contend with the city’s guards as well. At least one mailed and surcoated soldier was present on every rooftop and by every wall, watching for any who dare interfere with the tournament.
Voivode Turrakhan stood in his balcony with a long fire lance in one hand, pointed skyward. He bellowed out to the crowds, and instantly there was silence.
“Any who try to affect the outcome of this tournament will be stretched until dead over a five day period from the walls of Varsi. Anyone! I will personally cut their eyes from their face and devour them. This is my promise to you all!”
An enthusiastic cheer rose from the crowd. He lifted his lance to the sky and fired it, sending a gout of flame skyward.
“Listen! Today is the final match between the heretical martial arts of Selara the Daybringer, grandchild of the sun, and the immaculate martial arts of Shin Jin Twelfth Son, favored of the dragons. As is traditional for the final match, let there be silence in the square, that every blow and cry, every bone-snap and flesh-rip, may be savored for the coming year. Violators will have their tongues and ears removed. Let the battle commence!”
Selara and Shin Jin stood opposite one another, assuming their forms and preparing their charms. As they did so, Selara was almost certain the dragon-blood was speaking, but she did not hear his voice. Her mind was already back in the kwoon at the plum blossom retreat, listening to her master address the five snake warriors that had been prepared through his magical processes.
“You have been granted tremendous power...” he began, walking before them in his simple gray robes. “...which separated you from mortals as steel is separated from iron.”
He turned to face them. “This is not enough for you to face the dragon-blooded. They are chosen as I was chosen, and as jade cuts steel, they will cut you down. Beware them! You have only one advantage over them, so listen carefully.”
The only sounds in the room were the sounds of the rain falling outside. The amalgams were afraid to breath, so intent were they on obeying this command.
“Your charms will last as long as you need to fight. Stay on your guard and make them work. Force them to use their essence. Make them burn their charms. Their skills are efficient, but their mastery of essence does not allow them to fight forever.”
Stay defensive, Selara told herself, but she had to shake her head. She wanted this man to fall hard and fast. He was still talking, but she did not hear him. She prepared her defense, remembering that the strength of the snake did not lie solely in its speed.
Yes, he was still talking, but now he was also moving in for a strike. Selara watched him coming with detached concentration, noting how her infinite mastery of the martial arts made his strikes seem somehow slow, as though her attacker were submerged beneath water. She saw his blow coming, and she noticed how its essence augmentation was clumsily implemented, how easily it was baffled by the snake form. His skin was pale, betraying not the faintest of caste markings.
“He is strong... but I can beat him.” She nodded to herself and kept her wits about her.
The words he spoke were in realm, but she didn’t speak realm. As the sweep flowed toward her ankle, she lightly ran up his leg to kick off of his shoulder and land in a light spin on the stones, falling effortlessly into the snake form once more.
Shin Jin’s smile faltered slightly. He rolled back his sleeves from his blocky fists, took three sliding steps toward her, and shouted the same phrase again. She saw the additional flow of essence rippling through him, his anima beginning to roil about him. As his fist approached, she blocked it this time with matched force. The fist grazed past her shoulder.
The dragon-blood looked around himself at the crowd; they silently watched him, motionless as they listened for the slap of bare feet on stone, the subtle thud of wrist against wrist as they clashed. The terrestrial smirked at her and said, “I’ve read about the snake style, how it favors defense at the sacrifice of strength. Like the serpent, you can only hide in your hole for so long when the monsoon comes. Crashing wave style!”
Selara smiled, for she knew this attack, and now she also knew the limitations of her opponent. Using the full force of his essence, he struck, rising like a tidal wave as his anima rolled towards her in a spinning series of kicks. She watched him approach, but she stood firm in her purpose. Summoning her conviction in her destiny, in the purpose of her amalgamation, she leaped into the air, whirling in such a way that her single braid of black hair flew about her in a spiraling whorl of air. Spinning over the surface of his wave of essence, she skated over her him like a waterspout skipping over a lake.
Shin Jin recovered from his attack and turned to face her. His smile was gone, his face was set with the patience of a pool of still water. “Your fear of me is justified, for the dragon is the king of snakes. Allow me to demonstrate. Dragon drowns its hatchlings!”
Selara watched the flare of essence and knew that it was his last. The appropriate thing to do would be to win the battle through careful guarding, wait for him to wear himself out completely, and then begin to destroy him through carefully coordinated strikes to his essence channels, immobilizing him with precision. If her sole goal was to defeat him, then this would suffice, and she knew it would work. No matter what combo he was throwing at her, his skill would not suffice to touch her.
So when the typhoon came, she allowed it to strike her.
The first thing she felt was the strike, a jab that ground two of her floating ribs together. She felt the faint crack, and steeled herself to compensate. As the touch hit, she felt her blood reversing in her veins, filling her heart to the bursting point. Through a supreme act of willpower she constricted her essence into her core, forcing the misdirected blood out through her throat and mouth in a crimson spray that splashed across the immaculate’s chest.
The silent crowd watched her fall, their eyes wide as the amalgam slumped to the stone. Yao Ye, seated on Zhou Wing’s shoulders, held her tongue with both hands to keep from crying out.
Selara lay there for a moment, breathing softly, mentally testing her limbs for compliance. She was alive. She could still move, still fight. She stood and wiped the blood from her chin, chuckling slightly.
As she resumed her stance carefully, testing how the cracked rib was sliding to make certain it wouldn’t puncture a lung, she announced to the crowd, her chin tucked low.
“I’ve been hit by a lot of fists in my time... fists of gods and mortals, beastmen and dragon-bloods, chosen of the sun and even chosen of Luna. Shin Jin Twelfth Son... you rank in the low middle. You are at best a rank six fighter.”
He looked at her in confusion. “Rank... what? What in creation does that mean?”
She ignored him and continued. “I, however, am a rank five fighter. I could lose to you, it is true... but only if heaven caught fire and smashed into the moon!”
He frowned and shouted, “You’re not making any sense!”
“Then I will demonstrate.”
The battle then consisted of nine rounds, and in each of these rounds the terrestrial received a carefully delivered strike. One to each wrist and elbow. One to each ankle and knee. The final strike, delivered to his sternum, shattered his essence channels and left him shivering where he stood, his robes in tatters, as his anima banner collapsed about him. With one hand he reached out in a last fading grasp for her, but it became tangled in his beaded necklace. The binding thong snapped, scattering the fist sized wooden beads across the arena. They fell in the shape of a single rune, scattered about his body where it lay: the character for “past” in river tongue.
Selara took a step back and faced the silent crowd. With one hand she wiped the dried blood from her lips, and with the other she pointed at the character on the ground. “Varsi! The time when the immaculate faith served you, when the terrestrial exalted lorded over you, that time has passed. The mandate of heaven has passed! Fear not, for we are all now entering the Third Age, when gods and man work together to restore creation and push back the tides of death and chaos, corruption and decay. Welcome to the Third Age, The Age of Rebirth!”
Later, after she was carried through the streets of Varsi in the red mantle, after she was hoisted to the top of the walls to the sound of general acclaim, after becoming quite drunk with the wine of victory, Zhou Wing was finally able to ask her, “Where did you come up with that speech at the end there? I didn’t know you had such a way with words.”
“Oh, that? Memorized it from one of Nameless Ravine’s tracts. I can read, you know.”
“And what about that bit about you being a rank 5 fighter?”
“Bull.”
That night, Salvar was still quite sore. He could walk, but only using a pair of crutches, and each step sent a jolting wave of pain from his knee up through his thigh. The rest of his body was covered in bruises from his hairline to his toenails. Even so, he had dragged himself out of bed (to his sifu’s derision) to meet the terms of his defeat: the enchanting Yao Ye.
She was not being enchanting at the moment, however. Sitting opposite him she ate through an entire roast pig like a starving wild beast. He tried to speak to her as she ate.
“You know, I was... ah... I’m glad you could make to meet me. You know, you have the loveliest... petals.”
“Oh, you like them?” she said with her mouth full. “Some people say they make me look like a freak of nature. Do you hear that, Wing!”
Wing, seated next to her, shielded himself with his hands to keep her from spitting food in his eyes. “Yes, we all hear you, Ye.”
Salvar counted the silver left in his purse. “You know, when I arranged this date, I was really hoping that we could spend some time together alone. Maybe after this, we could go down to the river and... talk.”
“Oh, she won’t be finishing any time time soon, and she won’t be going anywhere with you alone. I’m her chaperone for the evening.”
Yao Ye interjected, waving a turkey leg in one hand to emphasize her points, “Besides, if Rivers knew that you were trying to make a pass at me, he would rip your nose off and sew it to your elbow. Really! It would hurt!”
“What? You’re dating my brother?”
“We’re practically married. Picking out curtains. Wait, your Rivers’ brother? Tell me all about him when he was a baby!” She launched herself across the table and grabbed his tunic by the neck.
Wing placed a hand on her shoulder and began gently guiding her back to her seat. “Calm down, Ye, our master doesn’t even have a brother. Hey, look, there’s Selara and, uh... Toruna.”
The two approached the table and dragged up chairs, ignoring the nearly visible daggers shooting from Salvar’s eyes. Toruna began.
“Well, the cart has caught up with us, so we’ll be leaving tomorrow. Looks like we’re back to work.”
Wing chewed on the corner of his lip and said, “So, how was your vacation, Toruna?”
She looked at him pointedly and said, “Well, Wing, I’ve had better sex, but not recently. Would you like for me to explain in more detail? You did seem a little curious at the Red Mare.”
Wing shut his mouth. Yao Ye pointed past him at a figure approaching in the street. “Hey, isn’t that Shu Zhuang? Old Zhuang! Where have you been? We’ve been looking all over for you.”
He pulled up a chair and sat down heavily. He glanced about at them for a moment as they stared.
“What?”
