Vows of Gold and Laughter (The Immortal Beings Book 1)

by Edith Pawlicki

  Copyright © 2021 Edith Pawlicki

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Cover design by Edith Pawlicki

  Cover art by Goldfinch1

  Maps by Edith Pawlicki

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  For Joshua, because he listens to my long dissections of dramas that he hasn’t watched.

  And in memory of my father, because he introduced me to Asian cultures, histories, and myths.

  Contents

  Map: Earth

  Prologue: The Last Acts of Bai the Warrior

  Diagram: Nine Colors

  Chapter 1: How Nanami Stole a God

  Chapter 2: The Useless Betrothal

  Chapter 3: How Xiao Worried, Argued, and Failed

  Chapter 4: How Bai was Recalled to the World

  Chapter 5: A Fight, a Talk, and a Song

  Chapter 6: A Drink, a Diviner, and a Decision

  Chapter 7: Power and Poison

  Map: Sun Palace

  Chapter 8: How Nanami Met Justice

  Chapter 9: The Wanderer and the Willow

  Chapter 10: How Nanami Walked the Shadows

  Chapter 11: How Jin Was Rescued

  Chapter 12: How Xiao Realized His Strength

  Map: Tsuku

  Chapter 13: The Sin of Destruction

  Map: Sea Palace

  Chapter 14: How the Sea Dragon Roared

  Chapter 15: The Sleeper's Resting Place

  Chapter 16: How the Night Dragon Retaliated

  Chapter 17: How Four Fears Were Faced

  Glossary

  A Note About Language

  Prologue: The Last Acts of Bai the Warrior

  18,000 years ago

  BAI leapt high, his calves burning from the demand. A broad spear head sliced under his feet, so close that he felt the breeze of its passing. He landed on the wooden shaft, and before it dipped under his weight, he decapitated the soldier holding it with an efficient swing of the Starlight Sword. He pushed off the shaft to avoid being entangled by the dead soldier, and this time his right leg protested his landing, spasming at the knee before giving out beneath him. Bai knew his end had come and closed his eyes in relief.

  But no blow fell.

  He slowly opened his eyes and scanned the pass, letting the Starlight Sword and the Water Shield – bound to his left forearm – drag his arms down.

  Bai had chosen the narrowest section of Cheolmun Pass to defend, where men could fit no more than four abreast – if he rested his fingers on one sheer stone wall, he could just touch the other with his sword. Having studied martial arts for twenty-five millennia, he could easily defeat even four skilled fighters at any given time, but to do so for so long against so many...

  When he undertook this task as a favor to his student, Gang, the God of War, he had accepted his death.

  But Bai heard nothing besides his own harsh panting. The soldiers of Zhongtu were a mass of blood and tangled limbs beneath him. While fighting, he had been almost oblivious to the smells, but suddenly the putrid blood hit the back of his throat. His stomach revolted and his throat seized.

  I cannot vomit on the dead!

  Bai made a clumsy attempt to get down from the mounded bodies, resulting in a tumble where he dropped his sword. His hands bit deep into the rust-colored mud – this was dust before the fight – and he dry retched for some time.

  When the heaves subsided, Bai sat back on his heels and regarded the dead.

  It was impossible to count them, tangled as they were, but during the fighting the sun had set and risen again. Given the rate of the fight, he must have killed nearly three hundred soldiers. A mortal man might have collapsed from dehydration or exhaustion, but though it was unpleasant to endure, Bai could go indefinitely without nourishment and rest, a perk of having been a stone before he gained awareness and became the first immortal.

  Perhaps there are some wounded who will live? he thought doubtfully. Having delivered every blow himself, he knew that he had struck over and over to kill as quickly as possible so that he might turn his attention to the seemingly endless onslaught.

  But it had ended. And he was still alive.

  Hands trembling, he fumbled at the strings that held his water flask. When he finally had it free and uncorked, he gulped desperately at the stale, hot water. He lowered the flask and looked to his hands, filthy and deadly.

  When will it be enough? he wondered. How do these men’s deaths avenge Noran? They were soldiers, not bandits.

  For the first time, he realized that he could not wait for some lucky warrior to slay him. If he was tired of this life, of slaughtering all challengers, only he could do something about it. He reached for the Starlight Sword, which lay haphazardly in the muck, and pulled it onto his lap. He had once thought it the most beautiful thing he had ever made.

  He closed his eyes. “I am so ashamed.”

  “You should be,” came a tart voice.

  Bai’s eyes flew open and landed on a heavily pregnant woman just past the edge of the bloody mud. Petite and fine-boned, her hands warily clutched her azure sari to a swollen abdomen that threatened to topple her. Her face was taut, and her jaw jutted aggressively, overcompensating for fear. Bai recognized her rich cerulean braid that hung over her shoulder and her eyes, bits of sky even from this distance.

  “Neela?” Was he hallucinating?

  Neela was only five thousand years younger than Bai – like him, she was one of the Colors that shaped the world. It was strange to think that while he had been destroying life, she had been making it.

  “Congratulations,” he said, indicating her belly.

  Neela hissed. “Don’t wave that butcher’s knife at me!”

  Bai flushed – he had gestured with the Starlight Sword without thinking. “I apologize.”

  “Hmm.” Neela stared at him.

  He cleared his throat. “Why are you here?”

  “I was elected. Cheng thought if anyone approached you that you’d just cut them down, but Haraa thought my condition might make you pause long enough that I could get some words out.”

  “I can’t believe Cheng would approve of such a gamble.”

  Neela tossed her braid over her shoulder with a sniff. “And why would that concern me?”

  Obviously it doesn’t. Bai empathized with his lovelorn friend, although Neela had always been clear that she didn’t return his interest.

  When Bai didn’t reply, Neela looked past him to the pile of dead bodies. She pressed the back of her right hand to her mouth and looked away.

  Bai said, “Haraa appears to be right though – it’s beyond me to ignore a woman on the cusp of labor. Why don’t we relocate before we speak? And I need to bathe.”

  She nodded. “Come to my camp when you finish. My wagon is by the mouth of the Kuanbai River, beneath the Great Willow.”

  “Very well.” And that was no coincidence. He had created the willow fifty millennia ago – Neela was surely trying to remind him of another way of life. But he was no longer that man, and he could only move forward, not back.

  “I’ll expect you in an hour then.” The sharpness in her voice made Bai wonder what punishment she thought she could mete out if he failed to appear, but he was in no mood for confrontation. As soon as she
vanished, he turned to the dead and bowed at the waist.

  “May you find peace in the Sea of Souls, and fate smile upon your families. I am sorry for taking your lives without knowing why you fought.”

  Bai teleported as he straightened and lost about ten minutes between. He was clearly exhausted – usually teleporting took him half that.

  He reappeared on the shore of the Kuanbai River, not far from rich green foliage that danced lightly in a breeze from the ocean. He could feel the large grains of pale sand through his thin-soled boots, and the river drifted past his toes languorously. Tears pricked Bai’s eyes.

  He swallowed his emotions. A quick scan found no bystanders, for which Bai was thankful. The sight of him, clad in armor and blood, would ruin this peaceful place.

  Bai set down his sword to unbind the Water Shield from his left arm. He set it on the sand and then he removed his leather armor. He shivered – it was a warm day, but the sweat that coated him and dampened his underrobe made the wind feel sharper than it was.

  He studied the Starlight Sword for a moment, its dappled metal hidden by crusted blood. He had always cleaned it before tending to himself. He had forged it from the metal of two meteorites under the white light of the stars over a hundred nights, and it had its own power. But today he hated it.

  Bai filled, drained, and refilled his water flask before stripping his shoes, trousers, and underrobe. He waded into the Kuanbai until the water reached his waist. Then he dove, swimming with deep strokes to the bottom.

  What would happen if he just stayed here? He didn’t need to breathe, but given enough time, would the water erode him away? He kicked away from the sandy bottom and his morbid thought.

  Breaking through the water’s surface, he glanced to shore, half-hoping, half-fearing that someone had discovered the Starlight Sword while he was submerged and made off with it. He didn’t want it anymore, but he could not in good conscience let anyone have it.

  But it was still there, ugly with dried blood. He returned to the shallows, where he used the coarse sand to scrub the blood from his body.

  I’m not even injured. Not one of the soldiers he fought for the past day and night had managed to land a blow. He felt like his heart had been cut out.

  When all the grime had been scoured away, he unbound his top knot and rinsed his long white hair. Then he ran his fingers through the sand until he found a simple white stone. Those men would still be alive, he thought, if I had remained like this little one. Both of them had once been a part of the White Mountain, until they were tumbled free by a mountain spring and washed down the Kuanbai River. But then their fates diverged. Less than a mile from here, where the river met the bay, Bai had suddenly become the first immortal.

  He shook the memories from his head and shaped the stone into a comb. Detangling his hair was soothing – he kept his mind blank as he worked.

  Finally he rose and dropped the comb into the river. He was ready to deal with the accoutrements of war.

  His garments and armor would never be free of blood stains again. He might as well be rid of them. White sand, white sunlight. He focused, bouncing the white light off the sand to the clothes until they burst into flame.

  While they burned, he scoured his sword and shield with wet sand. After he rinsed each for a final time, he set them to dry on a large stone. Then he looked for something from which to make cloth and found a dove tree, with large petals of purest white. He plucked a flower, discarded the pistils, crumpled its petal in his hand, and then shook it out into a drying cloth, which he used to wipe the remaining water and sand from his body before plucking six more. The first he stretched and folded until it became a pair of wide-legged trousers. The second became a wrap-around shirt. The third he tore into strips for ties, the fourth a loose overrobe with bell-like sleeves, and the last two each made one soft-soled boot.

  He dressed himself and then returned to his belongings. After a brief hesitation, he sheathed his now dry sword and tied it with his shield to his back.

  He wanted to lie down and sleep, but it had already been more than an hour since Neela had admonished him. He supposed he should see her first. Too tired to teleport, he pushed his way through the dense foliage to where Neela waited.

  Her wagon was parked several paces from the willow’s white trunk, where the long, thin branches of the tree caressed it at the breeze’s whimsy. Now that Bai was dry and dressed, the breeze was mild and sweet. The silver leaves of the willow rustled a welcome. He held up a hand in return, and they kissed his fingers.

  Looking down, it was as if the green undergrowth held thousands of tiny blue butterflies the same cerulean as Neela’s hair. Having once been a dayflower herself, Neela was very fond of them. She must have been here some time to have grown so many. The undergrowth was broken only by a stone fire pit, which had been used so recently that heat still distorted the air above it.

  Her blue ombre caravan was a whimsical affair, made of layered star and octagon lattices that changed from pale robin’s egg to a deep cerulean. The roof was arched, and the windows were six-pointed stars. Neela was watching him from one of those stars, a beaten copper cup in her hand. The scent of hot buttered bread beckoned him.

  “Door’s open,” Neela pointed out.

  Bai mounted the narrow steps of a curved ladder and ducked his head to enter the wagon – the lintel was only five feet high, ample enough for Neela, but hideously low for him. Once through, Bai was confronted by swathes of royal blue, shimmering sapphire, and cyan embroidery on cerulean. It took him a few moments to parse the many textures and shades into familiar objects.

  Neela was ensconced on a sumptuous velvet bench on one side of a narrow wood table. She was indicating the bench opposite with a smirk, as if she knew exactly what he was thinking. Perhaps she did. Just as Bai could always discern the essence of things, Neela had insight into the thoughts of sentient beings.

  Once Bai was seated, Neela offered him a cup of opaque burgundy juice. Bai thanked her and traced his thumb over the dimples in the metal before taking a sip. His mouth puckered – the juice was both too sweet and too sour.

  He gratefully accepted a plate of flatbread and yogurt from Neela and used the supple bread like a spoon to fill his mouth with tangy yogurt. His stomach rumbled its approval.

  “Butchering mortals is hungry work, hey?”

  He grimaced but continued eating.

  “You said you were ashamed?”

  “You’re not my mother,” Bai returned, around a mouthful of bread.

  “No,” Neela retorted, “you haven’t got a mother, no more than I. But it seems like you need one, so I’ll just have to do my best, won’t I?”

  Bai, despite his hunger, paused to stare her down. She met his gaze without flinching.

  “So why were you ashamed?”

  Bai gulped his juice, then set down the cup. He rubbed his eyes. “When Noran was killed...”

  “You decided to purge the world of bandits. To kill the wicked and protect the vulnerable,” Neela said dryly.

  Bai’s lips twisted. “Yes. Well. I...” He waved a hand, unable to find the words.

  Neela sighed. “I am familiar with your unrequited love – Noran bragged about it often enough. And although I never cared for her, no one deserves such a death.”

  Bai closed his eyes, remembering Noran’s bold, flirtatious manner. He had known she mocked his seriousness, his earnestness behind his back, but he had not cared. She had been everything he was not, and he had wanted her vivacity for himself.

  He had given her a braided bracelet of his hair so that she might summon him whenever she wanted. And she used it regularly – whenever she wanted to make Aka, the second eldest immortal and her lover, jealous. After she and Aka had Gang – the first born-immortal – Bai didn’t see the point in going to her anymore. That was why he had hesitated and arrived too late to save her that day.

  When he found her dead, surrounded by mortal ba
ndits, her crying son sheltered by her bloody body...

  Anger and hatred had rushed through him and found a convenient target in the mortal bandits who had murdered her. But even after they were all dead, and Gang returned to his father, the rage didn’t dissipate.

  Bai started his third life that day, that of a warrior who honed his body into a tool for destruction. He had mastered every weapon he encountered and invented dozens of new ones. Two thousand years later, Gang, on the threshold of adulthood, had come and asked to be trained, and so Bai had taught the God of War everything he could.

  Gang wasn’t just a warrior – he was a general. He had often called on Bai over the last score of millennia and sent him to the worst battles. Bai had always gone willingly, trying to obliterate the memory of the small boy huddled beneath his dead mother.

  “It was watching your self-destruction that made me realize we are better off without great passions.” Neela’s words pulled Bai back to the present.

  Neela had only casual affairs, usually with mortal men whom she could soon forget.

  “Self-destruction?” he said. “I never thought of it that way before today. I thought the deeper I threw myself into the art of fighting, the more men I killed, the more whole I would feel. Somewhere along the way, I stopped caring about why there was fighting, just that there was. Today... I don’t even know why I was fighting those men. Hundreds of men dead, and I don’t even know why.”

  Neela took a slow sip of her juice. “I know why. Shall I tell you?”

  Bai nodded once.

  “Those men were reinforcements, coming to the aid of the Bandoan king.”

  Bai finished chewing a bit of bread and then said, “But the Bandoan royal family were Gang’s first worshippers. Why would he turn on them?”

  Neela fiddled with her cup. “His father was fighting the Golden Phoenix, and the men of Bando tried to intervene.”

  “The Phoenix? But why? He’s not like the other immortal creatures that Aka has locked away over the years.”

  “It doesn’t make sense to you because you’ve never wanted anyone to worship you. But Aka would like to replace Phoenix in the hearts of the Bandoans.” Neela took another sip. “I don’t think Aka has been locking away the immortal creatures out of generosity – he has specifically been pursuing the worship of mortals. Regardless of whether the creatures are benevolent or wicked or simply are.”