by eden Hudson
“Neither can yours,” Raijin said.
“I cannot survive either way,” Zhuan said. She lifted her body enough to show him an underbelly full of poisoned needles, then dropped back to the floor. “I will not go mad and kill everything within my reach as your pack members did, but I will die all the same.”
Raijin grabbed hold of the enormous creature’s left wing and began to pull.
“What are you doing, stupid child?” she rumbled. “Did you not see that I’ve been stung by their poisoned wasps? To waste your time doing this is nonsense!”
The smoke was starting to choke Raijin, but he didn’t think he could answer even if his lungs had been clear. He just focused on dragging the guai-ray out of the burning library. He had to. He couldn’t let anyone else die in the only home he’d ever known. So many had already.
The burnt body scraped the floor, still impaled on the stinger, adding weight to Raijin’s burden and slowing their escape.
Raijin flattened Zhuan out on the floor, then pulled the crust of ash and bone off the ray’s stinger, careful not to shock himself by touching it.
When he was done, his hands were covered in soot that had once been human flesh. He swallowed against the disgust and wiped his hands on his uniform pants before going back to the task at hand.
Zhuan was several times heavier than anything he had ever carried alone, and her awkward shape didn’t make things any easier. Seeing that he wasn’t going to give up, however, she tried to help with what little strength she had left. With heaving flutters of her wings, she lifted herself an inch or two into the air. She would lurch forward, jerked along by Raijin’s pulling, then slam back to the floor again.
By the time they made it down the stairs, the entire second floor was engulfed in flames. Raijin’s shoulders and back cramped and protested, and the blisters from the toxic black Ro pulled and popped as he dragged the enormous guai-ray down the corridor. He tripped over bodies and stumbled into walls, but he wouldn’t leave her to burn.
Finally, he made it to the open door and pulled Zhuan through. She managed to lift herself one last time, and together, they collapsed off the school’s porch onto the verdant late summer grass.
“You did well, legged one,” Zhuan wheezed, her eye bumps closing. “You avenged your pack.”
Raijin fell back onto the grass beside her, looking up at the billowing black smoke filling the sky.
“You helped me,” he said.
“In the trees swims my only surviving cub, Nael.” Zhuan’s rumbling voice was fading quickly. “Take him, protect him. Will you do this, Ji Yu Raijin?”
Raijin leaned up on his unblistered elbow and looked into the trees. In a sun-dappled stand of sumac trees, a slight fluttering movement caught his eye. He had seen motion like that before, in the dark forest along the edges of the thicket. But if this was a ray, then it was much, much smaller than its mother. Maybe less than a forearm’s length.
“I will,” Raijin promised.
“Then my last debt I pay now,” she whispered. “My core...it’s yours. I swim into the afterlife to my mate and cubs, free of all my debts in this world. Many are not so blessed as I.”
Then, like the last wisp of fog burning away under a harsh sun, the enormous guai-ray dissolved into a silvery mist and blew away. Every bit except for her left eye. That turned into a glowing platinum bead the size of Raijin’s smallest fingernail and dropped onto the grass.
Chapter Forty-One
PRESENT
When Koida returned to awareness once more, she was sitting beside a waterfall’s pool, leaning against Pernicious’s muscled side. The sun was high overhead, and though she was sitting in the shade of the cliff, she felt the beginnings of a sunburn tightening the skin on her face.
At first, she thought she and the half-demon had spent another night out by the twin waterfalls that gave the Horned Serpent River its name. Batsai would be furious.
Then she saw Shingti run Batsai through, impaling him on her Dual Swords.
This wasn’t the Horned Serpent River. There was only one small waterfall here, and the stream at the base was too shallow. She didn’t recognize this place, but she found that fact barely mattered to her.
Everyone she loved was dead. Shingti, Batsai, Father, Raijin...
I’m the only one who can stop them. Please forgive me.
Koida pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged her arms around them. She was shivering as if she were the one encased in ice rather than her betrothed.
She focused inward, into her heartcenter. There Raijin’s dark jade Ro and her sizzling amethyst Ro cloud surrounded by its lilac rings were circling one another like panthers trapped in a pit together. Koida had never before seen an advanced Ro that wasn’t as red as blood, and now she had one in her heartcenter. With the bright, flickering streaks shooting through it, Raijin’s Ro looked like a deep jade pool that was being struck by lightning.
He’d meant for her to absorb it. The first Ro she’d ever absorbed. Now that she had it, what was she supposed to do with it?
Splashing and a litany of curses dragged her attention outward. Lysander stood in the stream with his pants rolled up to his hairy thighs, slapping at the water.
Koida watched this for a while, then went back to looking inward at the two different types of Ro. How was she supposed to navigate this new development with her master dead? She hadn’t even had enough time with Raijin to learn how to stand the right way. They had barely talked about Ro.
The gentle thump of hooves brought her back to the world outside her heartcenter. Koida searched for the source of the sound.
The sun had moved an hour closer to its bed in the western sky, and Lysander’s clothing was soaked all the way up to his chest. Time, it seemed, had passed without her notice. No fish lay on the shore, however.
Hush rode out of the tree line on a handsome chestnut stallion stolen from the palace stables like Lysander’s.
The yellow-haired man looked up from his splashing. “Just in time to scare the best prospect I had away. I assume you released the rest of the horses?”
Though Koida didn’t care about the conversation, she looked from the very wet foreigner to the silent woman with the cloth over her nose and mouth.
Hush nodded. She gestured to the water, then made a sign Koida didn’t understand.
“In my guest room with the rest of my things,” Lysander said. “I’ll get another one when we get back to town. Meantime, I’ll catch us a little dinner by hand.”
With that, Lysander’s arm shot into the pool up to his shoulder, but he came up with nothing more than a handful of rocks. When he saw Hush and Koida staring at him expectantly, he threw the pebbles at the far shore in disgust.
“Well, I don’t see either of you filling our bellies,” he growled, turning his back to them.
Hush rolled her dark almond eyes and went to Koida’s side.
Pernicious gave a warning whinny, a sound halfway between a whicker and a Petrifying Shriek of Legions. Koida pressed her face into the warhorse’s thick black coat, breathing in his familiar musky brimstone scent. She didn’t know how she had gotten the half-demon to come with her—she was certain they hadn’t stopped for a pocketful of candied blood oranges on the way out of the palace—but she was glad to have him there. She wished she could follow his scent back through memory twenty-four hours and stay there forever.
A soft touch on Koida’s shoulder made her jump.
Hush sat in front of Koida as if she would suggest practicing Resting Meditation. Instead of encouraging Koida to get into the meditative position, however, Hush took both of Koida’s hands in hers and looked at her. No, looked into her. The woman’s dark almond eyes plumbed hers with a compassion and kindness that made Koida feel strangled. Numbness and shock melted away like snow under a warm wind, and in its place some small measure of the horror and loss of the past day tried to peek through.
Koida ripped her hands away and sprang to her feet. She coul
dn’t feel that pain, couldn’t hold that huge awfulness inside her. No one could. It would kill a human.
Hush didn’t grab her hands back or force her to sit down, only sat patiently. After a moment, the silent woman got up and drew closer to the shore. There she sat on a large rock, watching Lysander slap ineffectually at the water.
“We’re all impatient to get on the road, but you don’t hear me complaining about it,” Lysander huffed. “We need food or we won’t make it much farther.”
As usual, Hush said nothing.
Lysander threw up his hands in irritation. “Well, if you’re so sure you can do better, by all means.”
The silent woman slipped off her boots and waded into the water.
Koida let their one-sided bickering roll over her mind like the river over stone. It was nothing but meaningless noise to her. She kept coming back to the same few thoughts—slaughter, poison, Ro, murder. None of it made any sense.
The memory of Yoichi pointing at someone and shouting, Murderess! surfaced. His plum-colored eyes, so like their father’s, had locked on hers. She conspired to poison our family!
A wet, wriggling mass of slime and spines flopped onto Koida’s lap. She jumped, and the slippery creature went slapping across the grass. Pernicious leapt to his hooves and triggered Darting Evasion, spooked by the sudden movement.
It was a fat mudcat. A second landed at Koida’s feet, then a third to her right.
Hush slogged out of the water and gave Koida an apologetic bow. The silent woman picked the closest mudcat from the grass and faced the water, holding the fish’s wriggling body up for the yellow-haired foreigner’s inspection.
In the river, Lysander shook his head. “Beginner’s luck. If I had a drink or two in me, you’d see who the real fisher was in this group.”
Chapter Forty-Two
6 YEARS AGO
With Zhuan’s glowing platinum core stone clutched in his fist, Raijin moved back to the tree line and sat down in Resting Meditation. Before him, the school that had been his home burned.
Between his own jade and his mother’s sparkling white jade Ro, the foul black of the man in the library was soon broken down and absorbed into his own. When it was finished, the jade Ro pulsed with evil-looking black veins, and he felt a deep sickness so strong that it was almost a well, a type of grief and despair he couldn’t hope to understand. The sickness throbbed in his pathways, the despair threatening to consume him.
Then his mother’s brilliant white Ro bumped up against the tainted, vein-crossed jade energy, almost a question or a loving offer of help. The jade Ro slowly oozed around the white, swallowing it. A flash of white light shined through his contaminated Ro, burning away the black pollution. When it was finished, the white Ro had integrated into the jade, leaving his Ro the refined light green of his mother’s eyes when she smiled. No longer was it the pinging, jumping Hail-level Ro of a Darkening Skies student, but as calm and liquid as a deep pool in a slow-flowing river.
Raijin sat there for the rest of the night and most of the next morning, alternating between watching the flames consume the building and looking inward at his Ro’s new properties. The blisters from the black Ro net seemed to crawl with stinging needles. Now and again, from the corner of his eye, he caught glimpses of the tiny guai-ray, but it never came close enough for him to look at it directly.
Though he had much to think about, his actions in the library not the least of them, he found there was nothing on his mind but the name the thin woman had said: Grandmaster Youn Wha.
This grandmaster had given the order to destroy all knowledge of the Path of Darkening Skies and kill all its practitioners. But there was no possibility that he would be able to face a grandmaster at his current level. He was no more than a Hail, only halfway through the ranks of Darkening Skies. He would never be able to advance further down that Path because of what he’d done in taking vengeance.
He didn’t regret his actions. At least not yet. But he would need a new Path he could follow to its conclusion if he was ever going to bring this Grandmaster Youn Wha to justice.
Master Chugi had told Raijin that to become the chosen one, he would have to leave them. This advice had kept him alive while the rest of his schoolmates and masters murdered one another. Sometime in the future, if Master Chugi had been right, Raijin would have to die, too. Would have to do so willingly to defeat the Darkness. If this Grandmaster Youn Wha was the evil Darkness the prophecy had spoken of, then Raijin would gladly die to see her stopped.
As night fell on the second day, the final section of wall still standing of the school turned pyre buckled and collapsed in on itself. The fluttering shape in the undergrowth to Raijin’s right recoiled.
Raijin looked down at the glowing platinum core stone he’d been clutching for the last two days. In spite of his body heat, it was cold to the touch. There was no telling what sort of gifts a demonic river ray’s core would grant him, but it would be a running start on his journey.
Lightning flickered beyond the mountainside, followed by a distant roll of thunder. Not the sharp crack that signaled the beginning of a sudden downpour, but the gentle rumble of a gathering storm.
In time, a cold rain began to fall, its icy caress soothing on his blisters. The bed of embers the school had become sizzled and died as the shower picked up strength. Rivulets of ashy water ran from the smoldering ruins, and lightning showed the contours in the thick blanket of clouds overhead. The deluge showed no signs of slowing.
As the thunder crept closer, Raijin swallowed the core stone, then raised his soot-stained face to the rain.
Chapter Forty-Three
PRESENT
Hush set to gathering wood while Lysander pulled his knife and slit the belly of the first mudcat. Koida watched him with eyes that felt as wide as wine cups. She had never seen an animal butchered before.
Inside the mudcat’s body, its heart still beat, and a translucent pink bladder filled and emptied of air. Lysander reached into the belly cavity, grabbed the gut sack, and sliced away the connective tissue. These inedible bits he tossed into the river. Blood and slime covered his thick, blunt-fingered hands as he worked.
After the first was finished, Lysander noticed Koida’s intense scrutiny. He sighed and stopped his work, resting an elbow on his knee.
“There’s no shame in turning away,” he told her. “Not today.” When she didn’t respond or do as he said, he pointed toward the trees. “Go help Hush gather wood, kid.”
Koida shook her head. What was it Raijin had said? Adversity built strength, but indulging weakness tore it down? She swallowed. She couldn’t indulge her weaknesses anymore. She needed strength. What little she had been born with wasn’t enough, especially not if she wanted...
The thought trailed off. If she wanted what? What could she possibly want after her father—Shingti—Batsai—Raijin—after what had happened to them?
To kill whoever had done this to her family.
Thinking that didn’t stir up any dangerous emotions that might undo her. All she felt was a calm, cold thirst for vengeance.
Lysander pulled the gut sack out of another mudcat, slicing away the connective tissue with his dagger.
His burled steel dagger.
“Why aren’t you manifesting a Ro-knife?” Koida asked.
Lysander didn’t look up. “Because I’m not.”
“Can’t you?” In her numb stupor, the rudeness of the question didn’t occur to her.
Luckily, the foreigner was being just as rude. “I liked you better when you were in shock. We should talk to Hush about teaching you the Path of Hidden Whispers.”
“What happened?” Koida asked softly, though she was asking it of herself as much as anyone else. “What happened to my sister? Why did she...”
An armload of wood dropped to the ground to her right, and Hush crouched beside it, setting up the fire.
Lysander looked up from washing his hands and knife in the river. “The Screaming Death.”
The silent woman nodded, striking a spark into the tinder.
“It makes you hallucinate.” Lysander began whittling at a thin stick. “Everyone and everything around you becomes a fiend of hell bent on ripping you apart. Eventually, your heart gives out from the strain—though not before a well-trained artist could take out most everyone around them.”
Like Shingti and her father had done. Until Raijin stopped them.
Please forgive me.
“It was the Water Lily,” Lysander continued, using the stick he’d carved to prop open the mudcat’s empty belly. “Youn Wha, the grandmaster Lao is always trailing around, or one of her students. They must’ve realized Raij was onto them.”
“Raijin switched our wine cups,” Koida said. “The poison was in mine. He knew it was in mine.”
Lysander propped open the next fish with a whittled stick.
“Must’ve seen something suspicious, then,” he said. He thought for a moment. “If they weren’t out to get him, then this Water Lily was probably hoping to implicate him in your death, start a war between your empire and the Ji Yu. Lots of nice, tasty Ro there for them, with all those warrior artists killing one another. But when Raij switched the cups and drank your poison, their plan went sideways.” He glanced over at Hush. “That would explain the Flying Needles.”
The silent woman nodded.
“Usually they use a blowgun, but this time the needles were probably thrown to avoid anyone seeing the weapon,” Lysander said. “Dosed your father and sister with poison using the needles and used the ensuing chaos to cover their escape. It was a well-executed alternate route. I think Raij would’ve caught up to the scum if the poison hadn’t gotten him first.”
“Raijin killed my sister and my father,” Koida said, marveling as she spoke at the emotionless quality her voice had taken on. “Then he went after Cousin Yoichi.”
Lysander grunted. “Anybody who survived that massacre owes Raijin their life. I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but your sister would’ve butchered everyone in the palace if he hadn’t stopped her.”
