Chương 32

Lorn sat cross-legged before the carved wall, and the cavern held its breath around him. Blue flames burned on iron sconces, and their ghostly light played across the mural carved into the bare stone. On the wall behind Lorn, a rendition of Jin Shenlei knelt before the wrathful spirit of Huihun, head bowed, palms pressed flat to the ground. The dragon coiled above the supplicant in vast spirals, each scale cut deep into the stone, and its open jaws framed the kneeling man like the mouth of a furnace about to close.

This was the true fate of Jin Shenlei, to become Huihun's first slave. This secret place was the site of that very supplication. The birthplace of the Burning Lotus. Pain lived in Lorn's joints, his spine, the roots of his teeth. The volume of it would have put most cultivators on the ground, screaming or unconscious. Lorn sat still as carved stone, eyes closed, hands flat on his knees. He let it pass through him the way a river passes through a stone channel, constant and enormous and endured without resistance.

Beneath the pain, echoes of vast frustration pulsed in his chest, a fury too large for a human body, and he could not tell where Huihun's rage ended and his own began. He breathed so slowly that the rise and fall of his chest was imperceptible, and each breath carried him further from the room, from the people in it, from the fact that, in a moment, he would have to open his eyes and deal with it all. So he went inward, stretched the moment, and did his utmost to make it infinite. He did not want to open his eyes.

But eventually he had to. Three figures faced him in the blue light. Hollow Prince Yun floated to his left, three feet above the stone. The child's mummified body was small and still, wrapped in funeral silks so old the gold thread had tarnished to a dark, dull brown. Two spectral figures orbited the child in a tight loop, a man and a woman, their faces twisted into permanent masks of anguish. A wider storm of collected souls drifted beyond them through the cavern like slow smoke.

Artisan Suwen sat to his right, tall and composed. Her face was beautiful the way a porcelain mask is beautiful, flawless, austere, perfect in its workmanship, its symmetry. A beauty past the merely human, that inspired unease and fear. She wore a long gown that pooled around her feet, sewn from a quilt of human faces stitched together at the seams by threads of sinew. The faces had their eyes closed. Their expressions were peaceful, their mouths relaxed, as serene as sleepers in a shared dream.

The cavern was quiet, and so the faces were quiet too. Feng Xiaohai sat across from them all, cross legged, tall and lean, without an ounce of spare flesh on his frame. Deep purple skin stretched taut over muscles forged by centuries of brutal training, and old, pale bands of scar tissue crisscrossed his arms, torso and neck. Horns jutted from his forehead in two blunt curves, tusks crowded his jaw, and red eyes burned beneath a heavy brow.

He wore threadbare robes, faded and frayed at the edges, tied at the waist by a rope belt, and a loop of wooden prayer beads hung from his sinewy neck. His feet were bare and calloused, and his arms were folded across his chest. And then there was the empty space where Mo Gutou ought to be sitting. Behind them, the survivors of the Shattered Summit Sect knelt in rows, foreheads pressed to the stone. Beyond the soldiers, representatives from across the Burning Lotus held the same posture, faces lost in the shadows.

Crates of plundered treasure from the vaults beneath Tianlong Castle lined the walls, weapons in polished racks, spirit stones in open boxes, scrolls in wax-stamped cases. The spoils of a hollow victory. Feng Xiaohai broke the silence.

"You told us this would work." Rage flared behind Lorn's ribs, sudden and white-hot. Huihun's fire spiked at his shoulder in a jagged burst that threw new shadows across the walls. The faces on Suwen's gown hissed and flinched in unison. Lorn's expression did not change.

"This is not a loss," he said.

"Just a delay. The other half of Wandering Flame fled to its sanctuary, its dwelling place in life. We will recover our strength, draft a new plan, and set forth."

"A delay." Xiaohai let the word hang in the air.

"You gambled everything on this vessel you found, this boy, and the gamble failed. You lost the battle of wills. Your other half looked at you and fled in horror, and now your fire can barely hold its shape." His gaze swept over the soldiers with their foreheads to the stone, then back to Lorn.

"And to crown the achievement, you killed Jun Fang. The one man who stood between us and the full weight of the Imperial House. The arrangement that kept us comfortable for centuries, gone in a single night of desperation." His voice hardened.

"There are people in this room who have followed you for centuries, gave you their lives, their blood, their souls. And this is how you repay that devotion." He looked at the jagged, sputtering fire at Lorn's shoulder.

"You are no dragon," Xiaohai said.

"You are a ghost. A husk of what you once were." Lorn's eyes blazed blue. His hand snapped out, and Huihun answered. A massive claw of ghost-flame erupted beyond Lorn's fingers, blue fire shaped into talons the size of a man's torso. The claw crossed the gap in an instant, closed around Xiaohai's body, and lifted him off the ground. The claw squeezed, and the sound of Xiaohai's hardened bones creaking filled the cavern. Blood burst from Xiaohai's mouth and spattered his tusks. His red eyes bulged.

His body shook in the grip of that burning claw. He let out a wet, guttural laugh.

"You see?" He spat blood.

"He cannot kill me. He is diminished. He is weak!" Hollow Prince Yun drifted forward. The small body turned toward Xiaohai, and the souls of his mother and father broke their orbit and pressed close against the child's shoulders, their anguished faces turned toward Xiaohai. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"You forget your place, Xiaohai," Yun said, "Yours is to be silent, and listen when the master's vessel speaks." Xiaohai's red eyes flicked from Yun to Lorn. He grinned around his bloodied tusks.

"Remember what I said." Crimson hellfire erupted from his body, and blew outward in a sphere that shattered the spectral claw and scattered Yun's spectres like smoke in a gale. The blast shook the cavern, sent spirit stones skittering across the floor, and when the light faded, there was a ring of scorched stone on the cavern floor. Feng Xiaohai was gone. Artisan Suwen had not moved from her seat. She regarded the scorched ring on the floor, then turned her too-perfect face toward Lorn.

"My my," she said.

"And they call me dramatic." The faces on her gown chuckled softly. She rose from her seat, and the motion was fluid, seamless, as if her joints operated on different principles than human anatomy allowed.

"I suspect we won't be seeing him at supper. A pity. I rather enjoyed his candor, misguied as it was." The faces on her gown hummed in thoughtful agreement. She took a step toward the scorched ring on the floor, and her gown trailed behind her.

"But it leaves us with a question. What is the path forward?" Yun drifted back to his position at Lorn's left. The souls of his mother and father resumed their orbit. The wider storm of dead re-formed in slow circles through the cavern.

"We now know that a peaceful union is impossible," Yun said.

"The master's other half must be consumed by force." Suwen turned.

"By what mechanism, dear prince? Do we possess the means for such a devouring? I confess I see a great deal of plundered treasure in this room, and yet nothing that would serve that particular purpose." The faces hummed again. Silence answered her. Lorn closed his eyes and vented a long breath through his nostrils. The pain was still there, vast and constant, and Huihun's frustration pulsed beneath it like a second heartbeat.

Feng Xiaohai was a formidable opponent, loose in the world now, armed with proof that the dragon could be challenged. Yet another burden to carry. But such things were trifles. Distractions. He had to find a way to consume his other half. - - - - Lodin and his companions encountered a crowd at the gates to the city. The guard was double what it had been when they left, and the line moved slowly. Bodies packed the road from wall to wall, and the stench of sweat and livestock rose off them in waves.

Ox carts loaded with produce sat wedged between merchants on foot. A hawker shouted prices for water from a clay jug balanced on his shoulder. Children wove between the legs of adults and earned cuffs on the head for their trouble. Somewhere near the front a woman screamed at a guard and the guard screamed back and neither could be heard over the general roar of voices compressed into a stone corridor built to accommodate half this number.

When they neared the front, a young guard looked over Lodin, Sarin Jeida, Kang Dae Han and Akiyama Shin, and rested his hand on his sword anxiously.

"State your business,""Returning to the city," said Lodin.

"What happened?" The guard didn't answer. Someone ten heads back in the line bellowed for them to move. A child screamed, and a donkey brayed. The guard sighed at both sounds and his grip tightened on the hilt of his weapon. Next to them, a farmer bumped into a merchant who wasn't paying attention to where he was standing. The men gave each other a once-over, then nodded in mutual apology.

"You know what's going on?" asked the farmer.

"Got no idea," said the merchant, with a frown.

"They're saying someone attacked the governor's castle," a voice from the crowd called out. Someone else yelled.

"The governor's been killed!"

"I bet it was those Burning Lotus gangsters."

"The ghost of Wandering Flame was seen over the city!"

"What a bunch of horse shit!" Lodin grunted, shook out his limbs and settled in for a long wait. He looked at Sarin, who smirked at him, shrugged, and said nothing. The crowd pressed tighter around them and the noise rose to another pitch as conjecture flew back and forth among the crowd. A laborer's elbow caught Akiyama Shin in the ribs and he flinched, glanced down at his cloak to check that the touch had left a smudge of dirt.

It hadn't, but all the same his jaw clenched and Lodin noticed a vein bulge at his forehead.

"I don't like being packed in with this rabble," said Shin. Dae Han chuckled at him.

"Not used to spending time around the smallfolk, are ya."

"The smell alone is an assault on my cultivation." It was another hour before the guards herded them through the gate and they were back in the city proper, and the crowd on the other side seemed no less dense than it was where they came from. Their destination was Joyful Garden, so they cut through Trader's Row toward Thousand Bridges. The trading houses had their doors open and commerce moved at its usual pace, as though the rumors at the gate hadn't reached this far into the city.

Merchants and porters and haggling voices stacked on top of one another. Food vendors had their grills hot and the smell of roasted toba beans and fried dough saturated the air. But the foot traffic thinned not long after. Stalls that should have been packed stood half-attended. A tea house Lodin remembered as full on his first walk through the district had its shutters drawn at midday.

And everywhere he looked, people stood in clusters of two or three, heads close together, voices low, their eyes on the streets around them rather than the goods in front of them. Everything was open for business, but everyone was afraid. Lodin took it all in as he walked by. High in the hills in the background stood Tianlong Castle. At this distance it looked like a miniature model. But something had happened there last night. Something Lorn had a hand in. Whatever it was, it was the culmination of a plan.

The last step of which was burying him under a hill. Something cold and heavy settled in the pit of Lodin's stomach. In truth it had been there since he'd dug himself out from beneath that hill. Since the moment he saw his brother's eyes, cold and distant, just before those stone double doors slid shut and left him in darkness. It was good to see you again. Again Lodin told himself it wasn't really Lorn. It was that demon. He held onto those words with all his will.

The four of them passed beneath the gate to Joyful Garden and a server greeted them, bowed, and led them down a stone path past the central kitchen where the clatter of woks and the scent of ginger and garlic and pork fat rolled out in waves. The pagoda she brought them to sat half hidden by bamboo and broad-leafed ferns. Tea arrived before they'd settled into their seats, with lunch to be served presently. Shin sampled the tea, and for the first time since the gate his shoulders dropped an inch.

He ate in silence, back straight, chopsticks held at the correct angle, and when a server refilled his cup without being asked he gave the slightest nod of approval. Sarin's elbow caught Lodin in the arm. He looked at her. She raised both eyebrows and held out her hand, palm up. Lodin blinked. Dae Han chuckled into his teacup.

"I think she wants to see that list of yours."

"Oh." Lodin reached into his storage ring and produced the scroll. Sarin took it from his fingers, unrolled it across the table between the dishes, and bent over it. Her eyes moved fast, line to line, and her lips pressed thin. He sipped his tea and let his gaze pass over the three of them. Sarin hunched over the scroll, one finger tracing names. Dae Han leaned back in his seat, cup balanced on his knee, eyes scanning the garden paths.

Shin eating with the precise grace of a man raised on ceremony, each bite measured, each sip timed. Three days ago, Lodin had stepped off the boat in Saltside, armed with nothing but a list of names. He'd spent months on the ocean with no one to talk to but the crew, and they'd stopped talking to him after the first week. Now he sat at a table with a spy, a vagabond, and an aristocrat. None of them owed him a thing. Yet all of them were still here. Something loosened in his chest that he hadn't realized was tight.

"Oh," said Dae Han.

"Don't forget. You have a hundred or so cultivators expecting you at the Founders Memorial Fighting Ground tomorrow." Lodin closed his eyes.

"Fuck."