The Secrets of Jin-shei

by Alma Alexander

  “Yes,” said Maxao. “I do what I have to do; I do what needs to be done.”

  He held out his arm. Khailin hesitated for a final moment and then, her eyes full of tears, stepped up to lay her hand on it. Nhia backed away as the two of them passed through the door, and out of the room, out into the streets where Yuet had died, seeking the lifeless, deathless thing that Khalin had made.

  Three

  “It is gone, Maxao. How do you intend to bait a trap with a thing that no longer exists?”

  “The creature is of secondary importance,” Maxao said.

  “But you told the others …”

  “I did not tell them everything,” said Maxao gently “Don’t be naive. Lihui will not come for that lumbering thing that you created; he knows as well as you how to make an image of a man. What he will come for is the elixir you used to do it.”

  “But I failed,” whispered Khailin. “It is dust and ashes …”

  “Yes,” Maxao pointed out, “but it is a dust which had no right to live and yet lived at your word. The rest is refinement. Lihui has made an obsession of this endeavor, and he now knows that you have discovered the secret. The mere act of giving breath of your breath and blood of your blood is not enough.”

  “How do you know what I did?” Khailin gasped.

  “I have read the same old scrolls, my dear,” Maxao said. “So has Lihui. You, apparently, found the secret ingredient that eluded us both—but as for the rest of it, it has been common knowledge for centuries.”

  “I don’t have the elixir any longer,” Khailin said.

  “I know. But inside your head is locked the secret of how to make more,” Maxao said.

  “So it isn’t the creature that’s the bait,” Khailin said, very white. “It’s me.”

  “I will be there,” Maxao said.

  Khailin did not feel reassured. Her skin tightened with the memory of Lihui’s hands on her, his casual possession of her body and her mind, the malevolent authority granted to him by her own willing act of submission.

  His scream as the acid exploded into his face.

  Khailin looked up, to see Maxao’s blind eyes turned on her in a sightless scrutiny.

  “You bested him once,” he said, “and you were alone then. Do not be afraid.”

  “I am not afraid,” Khailin said. Merely terrified. Not of Lihui himself, but of his right to claim me. I belonged to him, once. I still do.

  A part of her already knew how he would come to her—the easiest way, the way of a simple act of will, the ghost road. Maxao had said that first the trap must be baited, that Lihui must learn of Khailin’s achievement, and that this should be left up to him; when he and Khailin returned to Khailin’s laboratory he withdrew into isolation for the better part of an hour, to set the lure, to free the secret knowledge into the places where Lihui would find it and lust after its possession. Then he had returned, and had told Khailin that the only thing they could do after that was wait.

  “But the creature …”

  “Read your scrolls more carefully, child,” Maxao said. “You cannot share the same space with a thing like you have made. It is, in a lot of respects, you, yourself. It unbalances the world to have both entities in the same place. There can never be more than one in existence. The danger in creating a perfect double of your spirit which is gifted with this immortality is simply that it might destroy you, the original you, so that it can take your place. In that, at least, you did not succeed, and for this we can be thankful.”

  “But how can you …?”

  “You know this, too. You know of the ways that you can extinguish the spark of independent life that another possesses and then feed it your elixir, and breathe your own essence into it, just like you have done with your double. Both will then be you. And you cannot both exist. It is against all laws.”

  “Wouldn’t it die, this other, just like my creature did, if I were to do this?”

  “It is possible,” Maxao agreed. “But think on this—before you did what you did, people were ready to swear it could never be done. Taking it a step further could merely mean gaining a greater understanding of what you have achieved. It’s a worthy prize.”

  Khailin laughed, a laugh which had an edge of madness to it. “Why are you telling me all this now?”

  “Because it is something that you know, or that you were on the point of discovering,” Maxao said. “And because I now know that it is knowledge that you will never use again.”

  “You put much faith into me,” Khailin murmured.

  “I always have,” said Maxao.

  “How touching,” said a third voice, a familiar one, full of remembered honey and laced with a gentle sarcasm. Khailin jumped, but Maxao did not even turn his head.

  “Welcome, Lihui,” Maxao said. “I was wondering how long it would take you.”

  “You left me to die to take up with that old relic?” Lihui said, turning to Khailin. “What has he been telling you, my dear? Haven’t you found out already that whatever power Maxao might once have had I now possess?”

  “Not all,” Maxao said tranquilly. “I have a memory of sight, Lihui. I have one chance to use that, and I have long hoarded it until this moment. You thought you took everything from me? You were wrong, Lihui-mai.”

  Distracted, fascinated, Khailin failed to pay attention to Lihui for one fatal moment, and when a clawlike hand closed viciously around her wrist she cried out as she stumbled toward her captor. Lihui himself wore a smile every bit as wolfish as his erstwhile mentor’s.

  “So destroy us both, then,” he taunted. “Go on, old man. Do it. Go out in style—your old pupil, the most brilliant you’ve ever had, and your newest disciple, with one blow.” He clicked his tongue and shook his head, in mocking sympathy. “But oh, I forgot—kill her, and you will never know the secret of the Golden Elixir.”

  “Neither will you,” Maxao said. His mouth thinned. “You know, you both know, that if I had to destroy you both here, I will do it.”

  “No, Maxao. You won’t.” Lihui’s voice was a weapon again, velvet-sheathed steel. “Remember, I know your weakness. You pour too much of yourself into your disciples. You have invested too much in this one already. You won’t destroy that.”

  “You mean as I once failed to act quickly enough to destroy you?” Maxao laughed, and it was not a pleasant sound. “I learn from my mistakes, my young disciple. And you were a harsh lesson to me. No, I do not destroy things of value lightly. But, Lihui, she is nothing in this game now. Without her you cannot leave this room. You left whomever you used as your eyes out on the ghost road to die, again, as you’ve done many times before.”

  “I’ll never go with you alive!” Khailin flung at Lihui.

  For a long moment Maxao hesitated, as though weighing something in his mind. Khailin had time to wonder bitterly if her own life and all she had accomplished in it were really so utterly insignificant in Maxao’s reckoning.

  Lihui’s grip tightened on her arm, and he stepped back, pulling her against him, her ear against his lips. “Remember the house you burned” he whispered intently.

  The ghost road …

  Khailin tried to clamp down on her memories, but they came flooding back unbidden—the pagoda roofs, the dragons in the door which had burned her if she dared to touch them … the cold gray ashes into which she had turned all these things … enough, enough was there to open the path of the ghost road and take her back, back to that place, back …

  The walls behind Lihui lost a little of their solidity, became flickering blurs.

  “You hold her,” Maxao said affably, as though there had been no pause, “but in order to make use of what she knows you have to take her out of here while she still lives and is useful to you—and you have just heard the lady state that she will not allow that to happen. Neither, Lihui, will I. Don’t you see? I cannot lose. The only difference is in the degree. You will not leave this room, whether or not you still hold your shield. And since you will not leave
this room, Khailin’s knowledge is useless to you. Whether or not she dies with you, Lihui, you die here. You will never have what you are seeking.” He shook his head with a weary disappointment. “You always were precipitous, Lihui, my young apprentice. Too hasty, and too quick to reach your conclusions.” He lifted his hand, a gesture of invocation. “Look at the shadow that stands behind you …”

  Khailin twisted her head around at this, trying to see what Maxao was talking about. She could see nothing, nothing except the familiar walls of her laboratory … She sucked in her breath sharply, tensing to try breaking away from Lihui’s relentless grip, and he turned his head a fraction, misinterpreting her gasp, loosening his grip just enough for her to snatch at the chance of escape. She ripped her arm free and fell away from him, stumbling into a bench and sending an alembic and a number of glass tubes flying, splashing Lihui and spilling bubbling liquid on the floor.

  Lihui swore, lunged forward, reached for her again. His heel slipped on the spillled fluid; he grimaced in distaste, glancing swiftly down to recover his footing.

  Khailin, backed into a corner of the laboratory, felt her hand close around a glass container where a small mound of innocent-looking pellets rested underneath a thick layer of golden oil. Her breath caught, and her hand tightened convulsively around the glass; just as Lihui looked up again, his intent plain on his scarred face, Khailin smashed the container she held onto the floor between his feet. The glass shattered, the oil spilled free and oozed into the already viscid stuff that had been in the alembics and the tubes on the workbench. And the pellets, suddenly exposed to the air without the oil’s protection, burst into flame.

  The floor took it and swift liquid fire licked the hem of Lihui’s robe with deadly tongues. Lihui swore, batted at his garment with a free hand, began an incantation, but all it seemed to achieve was to intensify the flames; they caught at his sleeve, raced up his garments and caught at the splashes of chemical on his garments. Lihui clawed at his outer robe, trying to divest himself of its fiery embrace, but his scarred and twisted hands fumbled at the fastenings. In the instant Lihui’s attention was diverted, Maxao drew a small dagger from a sleeve sheath and tossed it at Khailin. It fell at her feet; she stared at it, bewildered.

  “I cannot use it,” Maxao hissed.

  With a flash of understanding Khailin reached for the weapon, winced as the spilled chemicals burned her fingers where she brushed her hand against them.

  Lihui looked up, his face contorted. “You think you can kill me?”

  “I already did, once,” Khailin said, and stabbed with Maxao’s dagger.

  Lihui caught the blade with his hand, and it sliced across his palm, laying it open. Blood welled through the fingers closed about the knife, oozed down over his knckles. It was an inconsequential wound, a bare scratch, but suddenly Lihui’s face contorted with agony. For a moment he stared at his hand with an astonished, wide-eyed gaze, as though the tiny blade that had pierced him had somehow, in some arcane, uncanny way, found his heart.

  And then the man who had once been the Ninth Sage of Syai crumpled onto his knees and began screaming. He screamed for a long time.

  “Die,” said Maxao softly. “Immortality is not a toy, Lihui-mai, and is not bought cheaply. Now, at last, now it is time to pay.”

  The fire reached the spilled liquids on the floor around Lihui. Bright flames engulfed the benches; glassware started shattering in the heat, spilling more chemicals into the inferno. Parts of the fire turned violet, or green.

  Maxao and Khailin fled its fury, stumbling out of the laboratory, out of the house.

  “What did you do?” whispered Khailin as she watched towering flames burst from the windows of what had been her house and swallow up the gabled roof. “What was on that dagger? Poison? Is that all it took—really? I thought he was immortal …”

  “Immortality does not mean invulnerability to death. Lihui could not die, but he could be killed. You knew that—you thought you had killed him yourself, that time in the house at the end of the ghost road that you burned around him. But I think you realize now that was a place of his mind, and not physical enough to hurt him bodily when it was destroyed. The acid which you scarred him with was real, and those wounds were physical enough—but it was beyond you to destroy the house that he had built.”

  “So is he dead now?” she asked bleakly, her eyes glittering with the reflection of the conflagration before her.

  “Yes,” Maxao said.

  Khailin looked up at him. “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I know,” Maxao said. “Yes, there was poison on that dagger—the dagger that I could not use myself to hurt him with because of what he laid on me when our paths last crossed. I could not—directly—harm him. But with my knowledge and your hand we accomplished it.”

  “I did what I did partly because I wanted to destroy him,” Khailin said bitterly, “and now you tell me that all it would have taken is a drop of strong poison?”

  “Not any poison,” Maxao said. “For every being there is something that is deadly beyond any imagining. You did not know what that poison was for Lihui, my dear. I did.”

  “But …”

  “It is done,” Maxao said with finality. “Let it be.”

  Afterward, when the conflagration had cooled and Maxao let her return to the remnants of her workshop, Khailin crouched at the pile of whitish ashes that might have been all that remained of Lihui. She stirred them with her fingers, dry-eyed, until she encountered something solid, an object concealed in the piled mounds of dust and ash. And then knelt in the wreckage, silent, for a long time, staring at what she held in her hand.

  Nhia and Tai waited for news at Nhia’s quarters in the palace, tense as bowstrings. Xaforn prowled the streets, detouring to Khailin’s house, but the doors and windows there were closed and shuttered and nobody had answered to her knocking. She had returned, then, to her jin-shei-bao, and shared their vigil. The day darkened into night, and then broke into another day.

  “What are they doing out there?” Tai whispered, shivering violently.

  “He called her mage,” Nhia said, her face ghost-white. “They can do this. They can kill him.”

  “You, too?” Tai said, turning to her. “Is Lihui all you can think of, also?”

  “No,” Nhia said, “but I do not forget what happened between me and the Ninth Sage of the Imperial Court. Don’t forget—this, which they fight, it has a part of me in it. He took what he took from me, and I can never get that back. I cannot but pray that Maxao is right.”

  It was on the evening of the third day that Nhia woke from a light slumber, with a cry. Xaforn, with her battle reflexes and swift reactions, was at her side almost immediately.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  “There is … I can feel…” Nhia’s teeth were chattering, as though she were cold, or terrified. “Look … look outside.”

  Tai ran to the window, flinging the shutters wide, and gasped. “There’s a fire. I can see the glow from here.”

  Xaforn had helped Nhia to her feet, and they both staggered over to the window.

  “That is in the northeast quarter,” Xaforn murmured, gauging distance and direction with a hunter’s practiced eye. “That’s where Khailin’s laboratory is.”

  Tai cradled her elbows in visibly trembling hands. Another. Another one of us.

  “That’s the second house she has burned over Lihui,” Nhia said, her voice strange.

  A sudden noise inside Nhia’s room made Xaforn whirl, hand on weapon, but the room was empty—as empty as it had been a moment ago when they all ran for the window. Except that there was something … something different …

  Xaforn scanned the room through narrowed eyes.

  “What is that on the table?” she said abruptly, her sword hissing from its scabbard.

  Tai seemed rooted to the floor where she stood, shivering violently. Nhia stepped forward, but Xaforn flung out an arm to stop her.

 
“Wait here,” she said. “Get away from that window. Your back to the shutter.”

  The other two did as they were instructed while Xaforn slipped warily into the room, watching every shadow. She bent over the small bundle on the table, tapping it with the edge of her sword first, and then reaching over with barely touching fingertips to push aside the wrapping. For a long moment she stared at what she found, and then she straightened, turning to the others.

  “Come,” she called softly. “Look.”

  Nhia recognized the object on the table first, and drew in her breath sharply. It was this, more than anything else, that told Tai what the intricately wrought ring made of some dark metal must be.

  “It is his, isn’t it?” she whispered. “Lihui’s? The ring of the Ninth Sage?”

  “There is a note,” Xaforn said, poking at a thin slip of paper laid beneath the square of fabric that had contained the ring. Nhia reached out, carefully avoiding touching the ring itself, and pulled it out. She squinted at the writing in the low light of the room, and then passed it wordlessly to Tai, turning away to subside onto the edge of the nearest chair.

  The note was brief, only one line in strong, precise jin-ashu script: It is over.

  “What?” Xaforn said. “What does it say?”

  “He is dead,” Tai whispered, crumpling the note in her hand without realizing that she was doing it. “It’s Khailin’s hand. It says, “It is over. I think they succeeded. I think Lihui is dead.”

  “Then everything is fine,” Xaforn said. “If it is Khailin’s hand, then she is fine. She is right. It really is over.” She frowned. “Perhaps now I can try again to find where Qiaan …”

  But Tai’s ears were full of the sound of rushing water, white noise, the clamor of her own blood in her ears.

  Khailin may have survived her encounter with Lihui, but the note left for her jin-shei-bao was not one of victory, or triumph.