by Dave Gross
Burning Cloud Devil clasped my shoulder and almost lost his hand for his trouble. “Allow me,” he said
I let him pull me away. He slapped his chest and drew a series of characters in the air. When he pointed his stiffened arm at my outline and drew swift spirals at it, the earth churned and blew out to form a pile beside the grave.
When it was deep enough, I lifted the remains and climbed into the hole. There I laid them gently in the earth and whispered a couple of things that nobody else needed to hear. When I climbed out, Burning Cloud Devil gestured, but I waved him off.
“I’ve got to do this part myself,” I told him. He withdrew from the light of my knife, and left me alone until I’d finished pushing the last of the earth back into the hole. I stood there for a while before realizing I had my feet on the boss’s grave. I moved back and sat on the ground. Sometime later, Burning Cloud Devil joined me. He didn’t say anything, just sat beside me. Neither of us said a word as the moon oozed past two constellations. He waited for me to break the silence.
“You say this was the work of your dragon,” I said at last.
“He claims all of the land within the sunset shadow of the Wall of Heaven Mountains as his territory,” said Burning Cloud Devil. “In spring, he gorges himself on the flesh of mortals.”
I didn’t need to think it over anymore. “Give me your goddamned compact,” I said. “You got yourself a deal.”
Chapter Four
Dragon Temple
The ground rushed up to buffet my aching body. This time I was too weak to keep my skull from bouncing off of the hard-packed ground. Once more I reevaluated my decision to remain within Dragon Temple rather than to be expelled into the tiger-infested wilderness. At least in the jaws of a beast, the end would come swiftly.
“Brother Mon Choi wins,” declared Master Wu. The squinting instructor of combat scowled at me, no doubt resentful that the late arrival by Mon Choi and me required him to stage another bout of contests after he thought the year’s first trials concluded.
The humiliation of my defeat at the hands of the other new acolytes, who had been training for days before our arrival, was nothing compared to the burning shame I felt when my wounded comrade hurled me to the ground in the wrestling trials. While Master Li bolstered us with his healing touch, the pain in my ankle suggested that Mon Choi must also be far from his peak condition. It was small consolation that he had won the title of Second Brother in wrestling, defeating all but the champion, First Brother Kwan.
Yet with one throw, Mon Choi had all but sealed my fate as Last Brother in each fighting style taught by Master Wu. One by one, my fifteen fellow aspirants had defeated me in five of the Six Sacred Weapons of Irori: fist, pole, knife, spear, and now wrestling.
“The foreign devil is even weaker than he looks,” whispered Brother Karfai, he of the absurd topknot sprouting from the exact center of his pate.
The foreign devil has keener hearing than you realize, I thought.
Karfai’s comment evoked a humorless nod from Kwan, who had prevailed in every style both before and after our late arrival. Neither Mon Choi nor I had demonstrated the least ability to appropriate that title. Kwan whispered back to Karfai, “The outlander is too old for such exertion.”
The pity in his voice was more shaming than Karfai’s dismissal of my strength. While I had lived well more than ninety years, my father’s elven blood granted me the vigor of a human boasting one-third my years.
Well, perhaps a human boasting half my years.
It was now more than an hour after sunset. Four bronze braziers and a ring of tall torches provided ample light for our contests. We stood in the proving grounds of the temple compound’s easternmost district, flanked on three sides by a dormitory, an armory, and a great shrine to Irori.
Irori was the god of enlightenment, known in my homeland as well. Vudrani monks spread the deity’s doctrine of physical, mental, and spiritual perfection throughout Golarion. It had taken hold in countless monasteries throughout the western continents of Avistan and Garund. Here in Tian Xia, Irori was worshiped not only by warrior monks but by a significant portion of the population.
Upon our arrival, Master Li had cautioned us that neophytes were forbidden to trespass beyond this easternmost courtyard, named the Cherry Court for the trees that thrived in plots between its buildings. The other three courts were also named for their fruit trees. Beyond the interior walls of the temple, I saw the light of colored lanterns shining on bare tree branches, peach to the south, plum to the north.
Judging by their appearance and demeanor, our instructors were, with two exceptions, no more than forty years old. Master Wu’s iron-colored hair suggested that he might have been more than fifty, although he moved with more agility and grace than any of the young men, except perhaps for First Brother Kwan. And the grand master of Dragon Temple, Venerable Master Li, might have been sixty or eighty for all I could discern. His diminutive stature and weathered skin may have exaggerated his years, but beneath prodigious white eyebrows, his eyes shone with intelligence and vigor.
Mon Choi offered me a hand up, but I stood on my own power.
“Forgive me, Brother Jeggare,” he said. “I did not mean to hurt you.”
“There is no need to apologize ...brother.” Referring to a base farmer by such an intimate term required a supreme effort. I had neglected to transpose my names when introducing myself to Master Li, but now I was grateful for the error. It was considerably less disagreeable that these common men should address me by my family name than by a more personal appellation.
I dusted myself off and straightened my back. Towering over the other brothers was no advantage in our contests. What the others lacked in reach, they more than compensated for with speed and power. Most of them had been raised as laborers, hardy young men who had worked all their lives for the opportunity to learn from the masters of Dragon Temple.
Despite my foreign origin, I was not without some understanding of fundamental lessons taught at the temple. My library in Greensteeples included dozens of volumes concerning Tian Xia, from horticulture to painting to silk production to the historical chronicle of the now-fractured Empire of Lung Wa. And, thankfully, the various martial arts, which I had long desired to study under the tutelage of a native practitioner.
With my youthful interest thus whetted, the arrival of a Tian diplomatic mission in Egorian had given me the opportunity to strike up a friendship with a young clerk named Song Chu-yu.
In my role as Count of Cheliax and Accessory to the Royal Court, it was my honor to introduce Song to such local splendors as the Grand Opera, the Royal Palace, Blackrose Gardens, and a hundred other icons of Egorian culture. He was a frequent guest to my home at Greensteeples, where he taught me such customs as the chadao tea ceremony and the Thirty-Six Forms of Exercise for Internal Fortification.
For decades after Song’s return to Tian Xia, I practiced the skills he taught me. Alas, for more decades since, I had neglected them. Thus, my practical skills were incommensurate to those of my peasant rivals.
“The final contest,” announced Master Wu. “Swords.”
Kwan smiled, and the other brothers looked at him with a mixture of trepidation and envy. I sensed they had suffered at his hand in the previous contests. My own smile I buried in my heart. At last, I hoped, I would not find myself the least of the brothers.
Master Wu declared the terms of the contest. Because this was our introductory trial, the first combatant to strike his opponent would prevail. It was incumbent upon each aspirant to acknowledge a touch, and the master promised harsh punishment for any recalcitrance.
My first opponent was Runme, whose former profession I deduced by the stink of fish that lingered on his person even after a trek of hundreds of miles from his home town. He showed me a yellow smile, obviously pleased to have drawn so weak a f
oe in the first round. When the master called start, I parried his hasty attack and rapped him neatly on the skull.
Runme hopped and rubbed his head so violently that there was no need for further confession of his loss, but Master Wu glared until he yelped, “I am hit! I am hit!”
The quick and surprising conclusion to our match distracted Mon Choi’s opponent so profoundly that he found himself poked four times in the chest and stomach before he, too, called out defeat. Kwan dispatched his opponent an instant later. Within half a minute, the remaining contests concluded. Master Wu paired off the eight victors, and I faced Mon Choi.
We bowed before engaging our practice swords. For an instant, I recalled the gratitude I felt when Mon Choi carried me through the outer gate to safety. Yet I had already performed the arithmetic presented by Master Wu at the beginning of the trials. The only avenue by which I could escape the mantle of “Least Brother” and the ignominy of kitchen duty was to prove myself First Brother of Swords.
Mon Choi grimaced as we crossed blades. He was more cautious than Runme, but he had no greater understanding of defending the four quarters of his body. I lured him into an attack on my legs and smacked him smartly on the shoulder as I retreated.
“I am struck!” His grimace turned into a beaming smile. “Well done, Brother Jeggare! You have sword skill.”
His approval filled me with shame, but only for a moment. Grateful as I was for his earlier assistance, I could not allow sentiment to interfere with my advancement.
The penultimate match pitted Kwan against Karfai and me against a snaggletoothed carpenter named Harbin. Harbin had placed near the top in all of the other contests and second in knives.
Radovan would have excelled in a contest of knives, I thought. I wished he would arrive soon to spare me further indignity among these common louts. Then we should continue our journey to Lanming, where I would present my petition to the king.
Harbin’s confident stance as we bowed suggested his skill with the twenty-inch-long butterfly knives would translate well into a contest with the three-foot-long wooden swords. My prediction proved accurate. Harbin demonstrated such precise blade control and fluid footwork that he had me on the defensive within seconds.
My first mistake was employing the Elliendo defense. When deployed against a fencer of nearly any school in Avistan, it is nigh impenetrable so long as one need not advance. Unfortunately, Harbin’s nimble shifts in stance required both a broader spectrum of parries and the occasional adjustment to my own posture. As my rivals had already noted, for a man of my age, especially after my encounters with the bandits and the tigers, such strenuous defense was trying.
Harbin’s eyes glittered as he saw a shadow of desperation cross my face. Emboldened, he redoubled his efforts to draw my defenses from the extremes of each quarter, high and right, then high again and low. The tip of his sword struck a divot in the hard-packed ground, an inch from my toe. I knew I could bear only seconds more of his assault before making a fatal error.
To succeed, my rally would need to be surprising, even audacious. So be it, I decided. If I were to know my final defeat in these trials, I chose to fail with a display of élan.
Having observed the movements of the other aspirants all evening, my body began to recall the martial forms I had learned so long ago. With them in mind, I reevaluated the situation.
Harbin depended approximately one-fifth more often on attacks to my upper and right quadrants. While I had little hope of a successful riposte, I knew I could almost certainly parry one strong attack from above. When it came, I moved my sword to block as I advanced in the motion I had learned from Song Chu-yu as Crane Steps Forth.
Harbin’s sword struck the earth again, deflected slightly by my own weapon. With my extended right foot, I pushed his ankle and allowed him to fall over my body, twisting to avoid acting as a cushion to his fall. Surprised, Harbin wasted half a second turning to transform his fall into a roll. It was an elegant recovery, but it allowed me time to shift my wooden blade beneath him. He fell upon its edge, while I added my other hand to the grip to ensure that I would not drop the weapon.
Harbin slid down the edge of my sword and recovered his stance. His counterattack was too swift to deflect. He struck me in the chest and upon each shoulder. When I declined to admit defeat, he poked me again and again, until Master Wu stepped in and slapped the sword from his hands. The blow was so powerful that the wooden blade flew across the practice ground to clatter against the wall of the dormitory.
“I won,” declared Harbin. “The foreign devil has no honor. You all saw!”
“Kowtow,” said Master Wu.
Harbin grinned at me, relishing what he imagined was my admonishment. His grin vanished as Master Wu kicked his legs out from under him and stamped a foot upon his back. The master looked at me with an indecipherable expression and announced, “Brother Jeggare wins.”
The other aspirants stared at me with expressions of astonishment. A few glared resentment or outright hatred. Mon Choi beamed with an emotion I could only interpret as fraternal pride, which caused me all the more discomfort because it seemed so unaffected. Alone among the disciples of Dragon Temple, Mon Choi appeared to wish me well.
“Brother Kwan,” said Master Wu, sweeping the other brothers from the center of the court with a gesture. “You face Brother Jeggare.”
Kwan took his place across from me and offered the martial bow, a flat palm against the fist that gripped his sword. On the backs of his hands I saw the tattoos of a raptor’s talons. I returned his gesture, my own gaze trying to penetrate the veil of his eyes. Was he angry? Nervous? What weakness could I exploit in this man who had triumphed in every other contest?
“Now!” said Master Wu.
Kwan allowed me no time for further speculation. He forced me to retreat with a blinding central attack. His blows were so fierce that I tightened my grip lest he disarm me and end the duel before it had begun. Just as I lifted my rear foot to retreat another step, he swept his sword low at my ankles. Independent of thought, my front leg thrust just hard enough to raise my feet above the sword. I landed awkwardly, stepping out of line to my right.
The motion was not what Kwan had expected, but only because I had performed the defense so poorly. His sword licked out where my shoulder should have been had I dodged as I had intended. I attacked his knee to buy time. He withdrew to the left, chasing me in a spiral path back toward the center of the court.
I stood my ground, employing a coarse but effective Andoren defense that requires two hands on the grip, leaving virtually no opportunity for ripostes. Let Kwan weary himself by chopping my blade while I recover my breath, I calculated.
And then I saw it. Kwan dragged his left foot whenever he shifted stance. Traced in the sand of the courtyard, I saw the arcs and whorls of our fight. Patterns have long been a specialty of mine, and in an instant I saw these for what they were: a sign of weakness. He was not wounded, nor infirm in the leg, but he had a bad habit.
A bad habit that I could exploit.
With a feinted step to the left, I abandoned my defense and attacked Kwan’s feet. He stepped back, again dragging his left foot to form curves in the sand. One more, I knew, and he would be an instant slower on that side. I lunged for the toe of his slipper, turning my blade at the last moment to thrust at his belly.
With a piercing whoop, Kwan flew above my blade and kicked me solidly in the sternum. The blow sent my point out of line, and his sword came down to rap me firmly on each shoulder. Had we been fighting with steel swords, he could have lopped off my head.
I fell flat on my back, and he landed with a foot on either side of my body. Almost idly, he kicked my sword away.
After a second’s hesitation to command my lungs to move once more, I gasped, “I am struck.”
The other aspirants cheered, Mon Choi among them.
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Kwan stepped away and waited for me to stand of my own strength before bowing again. I could not bring myself to resent Mon Choi’s fickle transfer of admiration. Unlike Karfai, Kwan behaved with impeccable honor and skill. Moreover, I noticed a twinkle in his eye as his gaze slid from the arcs he had drawn in the stand. As he withdrew from the duel, I noticed that he no longer dragged his foot.
Kwan was as cunning as he was strong.
I bowed again, this time to express sincere admiration. He nodded back to accept the gesture, but only barely. He knew exactly how much he deserved the acclaim.
“It is confirmed that Kwan is First Brother in all weapons,” said Master Li. His old man’s voice had begun to sound musical to my ear. It had a hint of the mysticism I had detected in the voices of priests and ascetics, but without the practiced affectation of pretenders. “Brothers Mon Choi and Jeggare are now officially disciples of Dragon Temple. And Brother Jeggare, while Second Brother in sword, remains Least Brother until the second trials. For two hours each morning and each evening, he is First Brother of Kitchen.”
My “brothers” bowed formally at the pronouncement of my new title, but few could constrain their titters. Only the cool of the evening breeze could soothe the resentful flush of my cheeks.
“Kowtow!” bellowed Master Wu. We hit the ground in unison, our heads turned to Master Li, but the old man sighed and looked longingly at his fishing gear. He was not the intended object of our submission.
Both masters turned to bow at the pale man and the noble he escorted, flanked by their twenty spear-bearing guards. We shuffled crablike to present our heads to the visitors.
We aspirants—disciples now—had caught scant glimpses of the visitors since Mon Choi and I arrived at the temple. The royal entourage had retreated to guest quarters in the Peach Court to the south. The other disciples whispered that the tall fair man who led the procession was a eunuch, one Jade Tiger, advisor to the king of Quain. They speculated as to which of the king’s eight sons had been sent to Dragon Temple.
