Master of Devils

by Dave Gross

  Along one wall was a quilt of hundreds of swatches, each a different shade from the ones on either side. On each swatch someone had painted a character or two. I could read only a few: “Cherry Blossom Pink,” “Peacock Blue,” “Scholar’s Slate,” and so on.

  Burning Cloud Devil chuckled and pointed to one of the colored patches. “Devil’s Blood.”

  “You’re hilarious.”

  He pinched the quilt to put the red next to a black swatch. “Breath of Hell.”

  I framed a reply involving his halitosis, but I liked the combination. It reminded me of my long-lost red jacket.

  “Perhaps not for such a sallow complexion,” said a woman at the door.

  The seamstresses weren’t so alike that you’d mistake them for twins, but they were definitely sisters. One wore her hair twisted in a coil held by pearl-clustered pins. The other wore her hair loose and looked younger, despite the gray streaks on either side.

  I gave them the little smile. In Cheliax, older women always fancied me. If they were lucky—or rich—I fancied them back.

  They returned my smile with a gentle bob of their heads that reminded me of the geisha back in Minkai. A moment later, their smiles died. The older one’s lip curled, as if she’d smelled something repugnant.

  “You see the challenge,” Burning Cloud Devil said. He was still disguised in his illusion, but he’d dispelled mine without warning me.

  Cautious, the seamstresses approached. Their hands felt my arms, touched the long spurs on my elbows and knees. Reassured that I would not bite, they produced measuring strings and encircled my waist, my chest, my neck, my arms and legs.

  “What magic?” asked the elder sister.

  Burning Cloud Devil indicated the colors he had selected.

  “Can you afford the price?” asked the younger.

  Burning Cloud Devil showed them one of those trade bars that looks like a little canoe and is worth about fifty coins. This one was platinum, ten times more valuable than gold. He dropped it into his fat purse, which he set on a chair.

  “The Resplendent Goddess of Fortune favors you,” said the younger sister. “We happen to have a bolt of each color prepared.”

  I left my pack and weapons in the fitting room and scrubbed up in a tub in the yard. The servants burned my rags as I lathered up. Even with the tingling lye soap, I couldn’t quite manage to feel clean.

  When I was done and dried, the servants gave me a simple white gown with cloth buttons running down the right breast. It made me look like a choirboy from Hell.

  The seamstresses were ready when I returned to the fitting room. They had already cut out templates for three robes in black and red silk.

  The elder sister took charge of fitting, cutting holes for my many spikes and marking them for her sister to reinforce with a layer of the black silk. “Breath of Hell,” I reminded myself. Her fingers moved everywhere, tightening the initial cut around my waist, neck, and wrists, marking places with a piece of chalk for her sister to reinforce with a second layer of cloth.

  The warmth of her tiny hands on my body reminded me of things I hadn’t had for a while, pleasures I’d never know again if I didn’t get back into my real body. I shoved that thought out of my mind, but every time she touched me, it nosed its way back in.

  They moved with such speed that I knew they were working magic. It wasn’t even dark before they had produced an inner, a middle, and an outer robe, along with pants and soft boots with openings for my claws and the spurs on my ankles. Servants entered to light candles beside the four mirrors. The sisters stood back to admire their work.

  “Finished?” I asked.

  Burning Cloud Devil shook his head at me. I figured the sisters didn’t understand my words, but they frowned.

  “Sorry.”

  The younger one conjured a short sword in one hand and what looked like a war razor in the other. The elder’s fingers bristled with long needles.

  “I said sorry!” I knew the Tien word, but it came out fiendish.

  The swordswoman slashed at my arm. I was too slow to retreat, and a slender strip of fabric drifted to the floor.

  “Be still!” shouted Burning Cloud Devil.

  Despite his assurance, I flinched when the elder sister threw her darts. They struck everywhere, but they pierced only the clothes. Thread trailed behind every dart, and the seamstress plucked them like a harp. Black and crimson stitches secured the fabric, and heavy gold thread embroidered the black trim.

  In their wake, the younger sister swept in with her blades, cutting threads and trimming cloth. I shuddered like the harvest wheat, but they never nicked me.

  The assault lasted until the moon rose and the loons called to each other along the river. It subsided as the sisters plucked a thread or fiddled with some detail of embroidery here and there. When they stepped away to observe their work, I checked out my image in a mirror.

  I looked like some Tian scholar’s depiction of a devil, but I liked the clothes. Plenty of black trim kept the red from looking too garish, and the flared shoulders showed off my muscles, which are pretty good even when I haven’t gone full fiendish. The thick black sash had hooks for my weapons and little pouches for my coins. The whole kit was fancy but comfortable.

  I threw a few punches at my image in the mirror. None of my spikes ripped through their slits. A few kicks, same result.

  “Good job,” I said, hoping they’d understand my tone.

  The younger sister held out her empty palm.

  “Sure, sure,” I said, indicating the fat purse Burning Cloud Devil had left on the chair.

  She opened the bag and looked inside. Frowning, she removed a pebble.

  “I don’t understand—”

  But then I did. Just as he’d disguised our appearance, Burning Cloud Devil had cast an illusion over the stones he’d gathered on the road.

  The sorcerer’s laugh echoed throughout the dye house, but he had vanished from sight.

  The sisters turned toward me.

  “Now, ladies, let’s be reasonable.”

  I was watching for a blade, so the younger sister’s invisibly swift kick surprised me. It knocked me through the wall and into the dyeing room. My body crashed into one of the empty vats. For a second or two I rolled around like a die in a cup.

  The sound of the waterwheel covered their approach, but with my infernal vision I saw the elder sister leap above me, all black and gray like a charcoal sketch in the darkness. Her robes flared out like wings as she flicked her wrists. There was no room to dodge, but I hugged my shins to make myself smaller. My reward was that only two or three of her heavy darts burrowed into my neck and shoulder.

  The seamstress flew past the open top of the vat. I knew where she’d gone, but I had no idea where her sister was. The rafters from which the silk hung were a good eight feet or more above me. I could never jump so far.

  Not in my real body.

  Kicking off from the floor of the vat, I leaped up just as a sword blade penetrated the wall and the space where my spine had just been. The rafter cracked under my weight but held just long enough for me to pull myself higher. I snagged a beam with my other hand.

  A clammy tentacle gripped my ankle.

  Below me, the elder sister held the other end of a damp length of silk. In her hands it came alive, whipping my leg back and forth. I twirled my foot in the opposite direction, but the silk was too heavy for me to escape before another length of wet cloth gripped my other leg.

  “Pull him down,” cried the younger sister. “Let me trim him into the shape of a man.”

  My claws tore into the beam, which uttered its last agonized sigh. I pushed away just as it broke.

  I fell toward the waterwheel, hoping to trap the silk in its spokes. My weight was too much for its wooden fram
e to bear, and I went down in a tangle of strangling cloth and splinters.

  The wreckage of the waterwheel caught in the trough, but I went through. I swallowed a big mouthful of water as I hit the surface of the brook. It was deeper than I’d guessed. My body sank until the weeds added their choking fingers to the throttling silk.

  I reached for the big knife before remembering my weapons were back in the fitting room. My spurs couldn’t catch the silk. My struggles only bound me tighter. I’d swallowed too much water, some of it into my lungs. Bright spots danced in my vision. Drums pounded in my skull.

  I was drowning.

  The realization calmed me. I could never unravel the heavy silk in time to escape, but maybe struggling wasn’t how I ought to spend my last moments of life. Never mind that the only living souls I really knew were on the other side of the world. I needed a clearheaded moment to say goodbye.

  A pale face framed in flowing black hair appeared before me. It wasn’t one of the sisters, but a much younger Tian woman. A much prettier one, I thought. She smiled, revealing an overlapping incisor. The small defect made her prettier still.

  Her name was Spring Snow. I don’t know how, but I knew.

  She nodded as the thought formed in my mind.

  Years before I met Black Mountain, she said, I fought the sisters to test my skill. When they captured my sword in their silks, I withdrew.

  Her lips didn’t move, but I heard her voice as clearly as if I weren’t drowning.

  Do not allow my husband to follow me into Hell. Turn him back to a righteous path.

  My face betrayed my immediate thought: Why should I give a damn about him?

  Because you walk behind him.

  It didn’t matter. I was seconds away from taking my first step on the long stairs down to Hell.

  Reach, said Spring Snow. It is within your grasp.

  My thoughts balked, but my hand moved. It stretched out through the fronds and searched through the cool dark until my fingers closed around a sword grip.

  Silver light filled the brook from bank to bank. The sword moved faster than I could have swung it, its blade slicing the cloth that bound me. I kicked down and flew up.

  The remains of the waterwheel exploded into splinters. The sisters reeled away. I landed on the edge of a vat, my clawed toes gripping the wood like a bird’s talons. My lungs ached as I gulped air.

  The sisters snapped to. In unison, they swept their hands back like dancers. A pair of fat spindles spun on the shelves, and torrents of blue and orange silk poured out at me.

  I leaped, Snow’s silver blade held out before me. My wrist turned its edge, but the sword needed no urging. With each stroke, it cut away another yard of silk.

  The sisters cried out with every stroke, like I was cutting them instead of their cloth. Their hands and arms moved in unison, tracing mystic symbols in the air. They summoned their ki and redoubled their attack. A half-dozen bolts of silk unspooled on the shelves and shot down at me.

  Thick silk tendrils grasped my arms and legs, two more smothering the silver sword too quickly for its keen edge to cut itself free.

  The sisters weren’t the only ones with strong ki. My body was restrained, but my thoughts and desires were still free.

  Burning Cloud Devil had shown me a lot of tricks leading up to his deadly Quivering Palm. One of them in particular had eluded me in practice, but then he’d squeezed another little scroll into a pill and walked me through it. I recalled his lesson on picturing not where I was but where I wanted to be. In my mind, I leaped across the room, away from where I was bound. In my heart—if the hot engine I felt pounding inside was still a heart—and in my mind, I believed it.

  Bound in silk, I couldn’t move an inch. But my thoughts and desire were free.

  The silk bonds fell empty to the floor. I’d stepped away, but not through space. Instead I’d moved through that crossroad of mind, spirit, and body. One second I was smothering. The next I reclined on a high rafter.

  The sisters looked around, stumped for a moment. I whistled and waved. Threw them the big smile.

  The elder threw two handfuls of darts at me. I swatted them away with the silver sword. The younger flew across the room, her sword and razor twirling in a deadly cyclone. I struck them out of her hands and she fell to the floor, sucking on the bloody heel of her palm.

  The elder moved to her sister, saw that her wound was not serious, and helped her to stand.

  From the rafters above, I heard Burning Cloud Devil’s voice chanting. My legs and spine grew warm with the magic of his “attunement.”

  The seamstresses kept their eyes on me, and I wondered whether they had even heard the battle wizard’s chant. For a second I considered revealing him to see whether they could take their revenge while he was exhausted from the spell.

  Instead I thought of Spring Snow and drew their attention back to me.

  “Sorry, ladies.” Despite the language barrier, the sisters could see I was done playing patty-cakes. I pointed Snow’s sword at each of their throats. They bowed their surrender as I retrieved a swath of blue silk from the floor and wrapped it around the silver blade. As an afterthought, I collected a handful of darts from the floor and walls. They’d come in handy.

  Considering that the sisters were the ones who put me in the drink, I didn’t feel too broken up about leaving a wet trail on their carpet as I fetched my gear from the fitting room and walked out into the night.

  Chapter Twelve

  Red Brush

  Your calligraphy must be flawless,” said Master Li. “Just as you seek to perfect your martial skills by repetition, so must you write each character many times to unfold its essential nature. To create a single sheet useful to the mystics may require dozens of copies before you achieve perfection. Thus, most of you will write the lesser characters in common black ink on plain rice paper.”

  I dreaded the next words the old man would utter, but secretly I also relished them. Brush technique was the only skill taught at Dragon Temple in which I exceeded all the other students. If only it counted as one of the initial trials, I would not have been deemed Least Brother and relegated to the kitchens.

  Perhaps the masters would also have admired my unorthodox spellcasting, but thus far I had successfully concealed Jade Tiger’s tutelage from them. To reveal it now would constitute an admission of my own disobedience, for which I could expect no lesser rebuke than I had witnessed Master Wu inflict on Brother Kwan the previous month.

  “Brother Jeggare shall inscribe the large scrolls,” said Master Li. “Brothers Karfai and Runme shall provide him with red ink.”

  Karfai fixed his gaze upon the ground, but Runme glared at me until Master Wu rapped him on the skull. Among the students, these were the two who most often incited scorn at my expense. Runme had the motive of having now lost to me at least once in every contest except wrestling. While Karfai rarely suffered at my hand except in sword practice, he wore his disdain for “the foreign devil” as a badge of national honor.

  No one would have been pleased to be assigned the chore of supplying the red ink, even if it were for Kwan, who remained the darling of the temple among masters and students alike. Crushing the red pigment and adding the precise amount of clear water for mixing was hardly an opportunity to distinguish oneself. Every student was striving harder than ever in the knowledge that the second trials approached, and with them an opportunity to advance in honor and prestige.

  No one doubted that Kwan would once again win the distinction of First Brother, but no one wished to exchange his place with mine. Kitchen duty was disgrace enough, but now all of the students feared for their lives should they take my place. Lo Gau was in an especially poor temper.

  One morning the previous week, I had avoided the kitchen master’s sneak attack while bearing a yoke of water bucke
ts. That would have been nothing, but in a moment of pique, I hurled the turnip that served as my hasty breakfast. The wily master of the kitchen gaped as the root bounced off his forehead.

  Even that indignity might have been forgiven if Mon Choi had not witnessed the event and shared the anecdote with the other students. Whispers spread throughout the temple complex, and soon Lo Gau found himself the butt of jokes.

  The kitchen master had enjoyed his revenge every day since, as my many cuts and bruises attested. I avoided more blows than I received, however, and at last I began to appreciate the silver lining of my kitchen drudgery. In dodging for my life, I had learned at least as much of defense in the kitchen as I had on the proving ground. Mon Choi noticed my unorthodox dodging and praised my “Kitchen-Style Evasion.” I discerned no trace of mockery from him, but there was nothing but ridicule in the voices of those who overheard and repeated his praise.

  Brother Kwan indicated the blank pages on the easel before him. “When will you judge the quality of the work?”

  Master Li squinted. “After I have caught my fish.”

  A collective sigh escaped from the students. Not once all summer had anyone seen Master Li return from the pond with anything he had not brought with him.

  The old master placed his bamboo pole upon his shoulder and strolled off toward the pond.

  Master Wu remained to supervise our preparations.

  Had it not usurped the time normally dedicated to my scroll inscription, I might have enjoyed the day’s task. My assistants and I enjoyed a sunny spot near the scriptorium, while the other students were relegated to the central courtyard. They stood in pairs before each easel. One inscribed the character for each of the four hundred and forty-four beasts inhabiting the vast lands of Tian Xia, while the other removed each completed page and lay it aside to dry. Every ten minutes or so, scribe and assistant exchanged roles.

  I enjoyed no such relief, but both Karfai and Runme were at my service, at least ostensibly. They performed their duties diligently enough, providing me with a bucket of red ink and fixing each thick yellow page to a four-foot-square plank leaning upon the Cherry Court wall. I wet my mop-sized brush with red ink and inscribed the arcane character for each of the eighty-eight common restless spirits.