Chương 37

A Steel Serpent Sect disciple arrived at Joyful Garden as the last of the daylight bled from the sky. He was young, square-jawed, dressed in black and silver, and he said exactly two words to Lodin.

"Follow me." So Lodin followed, across Thousand Bridges and the Terraces and into Anviltown, a district which spread across the base of Iron Mountain. Smoke and orange light rose from its many smithies and foundries into the dusk, and the clang of hammers carried across its rooftops in staggered rhythms. At its heart, the Steel Serpent Sect compound rose above it all, a fortress carved from the living rock of the mountainside.

The disciple brought Lodin to a gap in the basalt on the far side of the sect compound, which led into a crooked trail that wound through steep walls of rock and thickets of bamboo. The trail climbed the mountainside, and then opened onto a circular terrace of black volcanic rock. There was a pool at its center, its water a vivid shade of aquamarine, a blue so deep it looked like liquid sky.

Threads of steam rose from the surface of the water, dissipated into the mountain air, and the terrace was ringed by bamboo so densely packed it created a natural privacy screen. And there were hundreds, and hundreds, of frogs.

They dotted every surface of wet stone, swam in the water, perched on rocks and took shelter amidst the bamboo, green ones, mottled ones, some broad as dinner plates and others small as thumbnails, their croaking, chirping conversation rising and falling in a low chorus that filled the bowl from rim to rim. Sarin Jeida sat with her bare feet in the water. Her crow-feather cloak lay folded on the rock behind her, on top of her sandals.

A frog the color of wet jade sat on her knee and she was petting it between its bulbous eyes with one fingertip. She looked up when Lodin arrived and smiled.

"I was about to send for you," she said, and gestured at the others in attendance.

"But they beat me to it." Across the pool, Jorin Shen sat cross-legged on the basalt, his fists rested on his knees, his eyes closed. The old smith looked carved from the same stone he sat on. His breath rose and fell in a slow, even cadence, and the steam curled around him as it emanated from his body. Mayari Lakan sat beside Jorin, her hands folded in her lap. She was looking at Sarin Jeda the way one studies an insect that has landed on the dinner table and has not yet been identified as harmless or venomous.

And at the head of the pool, on a ledge overlooking the water, sat the lord of all frogs. He was enormous. Twice as wide as Lodin across the shoulders and half again as tall seated as any of the others. His skin was a luminous green, slick with moisture from the steam, and his huge, glistening black eyes caught the light of the torches and threw it back. He wore robes of pale blue silk tied with a red sash, and held a long-stemmed pipe between two fingers.

Smoke curled from its bowl in a lazy thread that rose and vanished into the dark. Lodin glanced at Sarin, then up at the frog at the head of the pool.

"You must be Elder Wa," he said. The frog smiled down at Lodin for a long moment, as if amused at the question, then drew on his pipe and let the smoke out slow.

"In a world far from here, long before Dragon's Rest had a name," he said, "there was a warrior called Juran." Lodin kept his eyes on the old frog and waited, patient for now.

"His family ruled a great territory in the east, and Juran was their finest son. His mentor, Elder Guan of the Beast Court, a wise old crane, had trained him from boyhood. By the time Juran reached his prime, no cultivator in that territory could match him on the field."

"His cousins were covetous of Juran's inheritance, and so they conspired to steal it from him. They knew his father was weak to games of dice, so they invited him to a banquet and sat him at a dice table, and by the end of that night the deeds to his properties had changed hands. Juran and his brothers were sent into exile. They wandered for years, and Elder Guan wandered beside them, and when the time of exile ended, Juran returned to reclaim what his family had lost." Elder Wa paused to gaze into the pool.

"He stood at the head of his army on the morning of battle. Across the field, his cousins had taken position. His uncles stood among their ranks. His teachers. Men who had trained beside him, eaten at his family's table, watched him grow from a boy into the warrior he became. Juran looked at them and his arms went weak. His bow fell from his fingers to the ground." Lodin saw where the frog was going with this story.

"He said to Elder Guan: I cannot raise arms against these men. Whatever they took from us, these are my blood. I would sooner fall on my own blade than cut them down." Elder Wa tapped ash from the pipe bowl onto the wet stone.

"Elder Guan told him: what you grieve is already gone. The men across that field chose their path the day they sat your father at that table. Your love for them is real. But your duty is older than that love, and it cannot bend to grief. The war arrived whether Juran called it or not. The only question left was whether he would stand in his place." The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

"Juran stood rooted to the earth. Tears ran down his face as he bent down and retrieved his bow. He fought with a heavy heart, and though he wept for the passing of those forms he had come to love, with spear and bow he won back everything his family had lost." Elder Wa let the silence sit, then turned his golden eyes to Lodin.

"Tell me," he said.

"What do you make of that story?" Lodin looked up at the giant frog. He'd guessed the point of the tale, at least the point of it being told to him here.

"You want to know if I want to save Lorn," he said.

"Even knowing what he's done." Elder Wa drew on his pipe and said nothing. The silence stretched. Sarin watched him across the pool, and a slow grin crossed her face. She winked at him. Mayari watched him the way she had watched Sarin earlier, that flat, measuring look. Jorin had opened his eyes. Lodin thought about the village. The bone pit. The bodies broken in ways that took monstrous callousness, if not outright gleeful malice.

He had stood at the edge of that pit and felt the ground shift under him, and some part of him had known then what his mouth had refused to form into words. Lorn had been there. A cold thing moved through his chest. His thoughts turned to Lorn. Lorn, who could not watch an animal suffer without doing something about it. Lorn, whose only real talent had always been for absorbing punishment that should have broken him.

Whether by coercion or soul domination, the Lorn he knew could not have been the thing that made that bone pit.

"I don't care what he did," Lodin said.

"Lorn's my brother. I'll pull him out of whatever hole he's fallen into, and I'll put down anyone who stands between us." Silence held for a moment. Mayari looked at Jorin, and something passed between them. Jorin then turned his attention to Lodin.

"When we defeated Wandering Flame," he said, "we believed the hard part was over. The Imperial House sent settlers. Myself, Jin and Mayari formed the first three sects, the Divine Gale, the Jade Nettle, the Steel Serpent. Jun Fang took his seat in Tianlong Castle as imperial governor, and Dragon's Rest grew into what you see now." He paused, and Lodin thought he saw pain behind Jorin's eyes.

"Jin was a loyal friend. What none of us knew at the time was that his victory was not only imperfect but also the seed of his defeat. A malformed remnant of Wandering Flame endured in hell, Huihun. It wanted revenge on Jin Shenlei, and what Huihun wanted, it took. Jin submitted, and the group that calls itself Burning Lotus arose from that submission." Lodin nodded.

"I'd figured out some of that." Jorin continued.

"When Jin Shenlei fell to Huihun, the Imperial House sent another to replace him as head of the Divine Gale Sect. You've met that man already, Han Yuan. The official story is that Jin Shenlei completed his cultivation and ascended to divinity."

"The truth is that they ordered us to kill him," said Mayari Lakan. Suddenly the fable made more sense. They wanted to know if he would have chosen principles over loyalty.

"And you did it," said Lodin. Mayari's gaze hardened.

"Our greatest regret. And the beginning of all our regrets to come."

"We've had ample time to discuss our regrets," said Jorin Shen.

"And to speak of Jin, what he'd make of all this if he were still alive. What he would have wanted us to do."

"What did you come up with," Lodin asked. Elder Wa exhaled a plume of smoke that floated about his head in lazy tendrils.

"We are going to complete your brother's plan, but not in the way he would wish. We are going to make the spirit of Wandering Flame whole again." Lodin's eyebrows rose. The great frog continued.

"Your brother's caper at Tianlong Castle was a failure. I felt it from here; the part of Wandering Flame Mayari imprisoned long ago was freed. But then it beheld its other half, malformed and corrupted by its sojourn in hell, and fled from its presence. In order for the two parts to reunite, what has been corrupted must be cleansed."

"So you're proposing some kind of exorcism," Lodin said.

"An exorcism separates a spirit from its host," said Elder Wa.

"Should Huihun flee your brother's body, our chance is lost. He must be cleansed while still in possession of Lorn. And so we must go to the place where the other half of Wandering Flame's spirit abides, wait for your brother to appear there, and you must keep all parties occupied while I go about the cleansing."

"Han Yuan will attempt to slay it the moment it's within his reach," Mayari Lakan added.

"He was sent to stand vigil over this place in case this situation ever came to be, and now it has. But he has no love for Wandering Flame, Dragon's Rest, and certainly not your brother. He'll kill him without hesitation." Lodin saw the shape of what was to come. Wherever the remnant of Wandering Flame was now, three forces with three different purposes were about to converge on it. Lorn would make another attempt at what he failed. Mayari, Jorin, and Elder Wa meant to mend the dragon's soul.

And Han Yuan would have his sword out.

"What happens to Lorn if you're successful?" Lodin asked Elder Wa. The great frog took a slow drag from his pipe, exhaled and watched the smoke, and there was a resigned look on his face.

"He may or may not survive Huihun's cleansing. I cannot say. It will depend on the strength of his own spirit. But Lorn's best hope of salvation lies with us, whether he lives or dies." A cold pressure settled behind Lodin's sternum. He held Elder Wa's gaze, and a small part of him wanted to punch the old frog's resigned face. He was being too calm about this, too casual. Lorn wasn't dying here. Anyone who tried would get a fist through the skull. Anyone. Lodin looked down at the pool.

A small frog pushed through the shallows below him, unhurried, indifferent to everything above the waterline. He watched it reach the far edge and climb out onto the stone. He breathed out through his nose, slow and deliberate. One thing at a time.

"So," Lodin said.

"What's your plan." Elder Wa set his pipe on the rock beside him and folded his hands in his lap.

"Wandering Flame's uncorrupted half retreated to the grove where it first made its home here," he said.

"Lorn will find it. Huihun knows that place the way a scar knows the blade that made it. When your brother arrives, he will attempt what he failed at Tianlong Castle, and Burning Lotus will be at his back."

"We go first," said Jorin.

"We take position before any of them arrive."

"When it begins, I will need your fists," said Elder Wa.

"The White Root Soul Shriving technique requires time to execute. Minutes, at minimum. Longer if Huihun resists, and I suspect he will."

"How many minutes," Lodin said.

"As many as you can give me."

"If you promise you'll do your best to make sure Lorn isn't harmed, I'll give you all the minutes you need." Elder Wa picked up his pipe again.

"Then we have a plan," he said.