by Aaron French
“Where were you going?” she asked Kantoh. “When you found us?”
“No place,” said Kantoh, staring across the expanse of wooded hills. “Every place.”
“You have no destination?” He was an odd man, priest or not.
Kantoh nodded, smiling at the sky. “I was told to wander the world. I and eleven of my brothers.”
“Is there no purpose to your wandering?”
“Perhaps the wandering itself is the purpose,” he said, looking at her with his calm, dark eyes. “Or perhaps I wander to find it.”
After a moment’s rest, they traveled down the hillside. Kantoh carried Ond, who stared up at him with a round-faced grin.
“To what faith to you belong, Kantoh?” she asked.
“It is called the Order of the Empty Hand,” he said.
“I have never—”
He silenced her with a wave of his hand. “Listen,” he whispered. She heard only the whine of the wind blowing down from the far mountains, the rustle of leaves above her head. Then... the pounding of earth... horses... galloping. Kantoh led her off the road, and they hid behind a copse of trees as the sound of horses and clanking metal grew louder.
A legion of armored soldiers topped the hill, the crimson and black banner of Taringol the Mighty flying above their raised lances. Their armor flashed scarlet, gold, and green in the sunlight, and their painted helmets bore the faces of leering demons, fanged and eager for blood. But the eyes that looked out from beneath the horned helmets were all too human. Curved swords were strapped to the flanks of their horses, and the skulls of enemy soldiers hung from their saddles. Anfai could not fail to recognize them; they were the battle-hardened troops that had dragged her husband, her cousin, and twenty other men of her village off to war last spring. With most of their strong young men gone to serve the Lords of Taringol, the village had been easy prey for the savage Sons of the Spear. Now the royal soldiers must be seeking more flesh and bone to fill their ranks. Her heart sank when she realized where they were heading.
The troops galloped away down the hill, and Anfai could breathe again.
“They head for Five Trees,” she told Kantoh. “They’ll take what they want and slay any who stand in their way.”
Kantoh nodded. “Perhaps the soldiers will be gone by the time we arrive,” he said.
As they continued their journey, she wondered how he could remain so damnably calm knowing that death galloped through these hills swathed in metal and cruelty. She said another prayer, made a plea for the safety of her uncle and his family.
“Is that why you carry neither food, drink, or weapons?” she asked Kantoh. They trundled up the next hill, stepping over droppings left by the soldiers’ horses. “This Empty Hand Order forbids it?”
Kantoh nodded. “Nature provides all things,” he said. “Material possessions bring only suffering and pollution of the spirit.”
A strange religion, thought Anfai. She could not imagine where in all the wide lands of Zin this able priest, this poorest of the poor, this rescuer of babes and widows—had come from. Yet her knowledge of the world was limited to tales and stories told by village elders and the accounts of traveling merchants. What did she know of exotic religions and faraway kingdoms? She remembered her grandfather’s tales of the Invisible City, and she wondered... might that wondrous place of legend be where Kantoh’s temple had lain? Perhaps she could convince him to stay a little while with her in Five Trees, where she might cook for him and discover more of his sublime secrets. He was quite handsome. Kantoh smiled when he caught her staring at him, and she quickly turned her eyes away. There was no time for such foolish thoughts...
As they entered the river valley, the white smokes of distant hearth-fires rose into the sky. Five Trees lay directly below, alongside the Cloudfall River, a collection of delicate wooden structures, corralled fields of goats and cattle, and a few scattered orchards. The village was not wealthy but the valley was fertile, and those who lived here never went hungry. She winced when she saw the crimson banner of Taringol flying above the central plaza. The soldiers had reached this place and would stay for the night.
Two villagers were dead already. Anfai saw their forlorn spirits rising like smokes from dwindling fires. Just as she never told those in her village about the things she saw, the things only she could see, she did not tell Kantoh. She did not want him to think her mad, as her village had when she was too young to keep her mouth shut. She had learned years ago to say nothing when the evening phantoms came, or a wandering specter stalked the streets of the village. She had the ghost-sight, as her grandmother had before her. Her mother knew, had always known, of her daughter’s gift. Anfai learned the hard way to follow her advice, and keep such phantasmal visions to herself. When her mother died, twelve seasons past, Anfai saw her spirit smiling down at her daughter as it rose to join the white clouds. She never knew if her mother had the sight.
“They will murder the villagers,” she told Kantoh, as they followed the path down toward Five Trees.
“Why would they do that?” he asked.
Only a priest who knew nothing of the real world would ask such a stupid question.
“Because they can,” she said. “They take pleasure in it. They demand what they want, and kill when refused. The young men they take for their armies, the young women for their lust.”
“You fear for the safety of your relatives... ”
Anfai said nothing. She spotted the peaked roof of her uncle’s house rising on the other side of the village center. From the summit of its roof flew his family insignia, a black character painted on white cloth. Several such banners, each with their own unique characters, flew from the roofs of Five Trees. Many prosperous farming families worked the orchards here.
Kantoh and Anfai entered the village proper by the main street. Ond slept peacefully in her arms. The restless horses of the soldiers milled about the main plaza, and the soldiers themselves congregated in a house they had appropriated as their quarters. The two corpses lying in the bloodied dirt of the plaza, a man and a woman, must have been the house’s owners. The rest of the village had wisely fled indoors to wait out the occupation. The sounds of raucous carousing came from the humble house’s open doors. The soldiers had obviously broken into the dead couple’s wine cellar. A pair of soldiers stood in the plaza, drinking from iron flasks, their demonical helmets hanging from the pommels of their saddles. As Kantoh and Anfai entered the plaza, the narrow black eyes of the armored men focused on them. Exchanging brief words, they walked to intercept the new arrivals.
“Come to join our party, pretty one?” asked a soldier, wiping wine from his lips with a gauntleted hand. “Right in there...” He pointed toward the house where his fellows feasted.
“Excuse us,” said Kantoh. “We go to the house of our uncle, to seek shelter for our baby.” The priest gestured to Ond, who lay swaddled securely against Anfai’s breast.
The soldiers moved to block their passage. Anfai bit her lip and kept her eyes on the ground. If they wanted her, they would have her, and what would become of little Ond then?
A mailed fist flew at Kantoh’s head, but met only air when the priest made a subtle twist of his neck. The soldier swung his other fist, but Kantoh bowed and escaped the blow.
“Ha!” laughed the other soldier. “He’s a quick one!”
The humiliated man drew his curved blade with a metallic whisper. “Let us see how quick...”
Anfai backed away as Kantoh leapt above the sweep of the sword and landed gently as a sparrow upon the warrior’s armored shoulders. For a timeless moment, he balanced himself there, while the second man looked on in wonder. The first stabbed upward with his blade, but Kantoh was no longer there. He stood behind the soldier now, and the warrior bellowed a cry of rage. He turned, and his steel made an arc at Kantoh’s neck, but the priest moved like a white flame, flowing like liquid fire. His arm shot forward quicker than the eye could register, and the soldier fell on his b
ack with a sound like a dropped bag of metal coins.
Kantoh looked at Anfai, his gentle smile returning. “Go.” he said, as the second soldier drew his sword, cursing at him. “Find your uncle.”
She heard only the sound of the sword slicing air as she ran across the plaza. A cry of surprise and a grunt of pain. Then another thump as the soldier hit the dirt.
Someone shouted, a shrill cry torn from the crimson chaos of a battlefield, and Anfai reached the sidestreet that led to her uncle’s house. She stopped. She couldn’t leave Kantoh... and she had to see what was happening in the plaza. She peeked around the corner, watching the scene with only her right eye. Somewhere above her, she heard windows opening, the sounds of villagers looking down into the plaza, whispering in tones of awe and fear.
Kantoh danced. Like a pale flame he shifted, swayed, and leapt from soldier to soldier as they rushed from the stolen house and carved the wind with their swords. Anfai thought for a moment that a great, albino tiger had fallen among the man-bodied demons of crimson and gold and was ripping them to shreds. Kantoh swam a sea of whirling blades, his hands and feet meeting heads, chins, and groins with the familiar sound of wood being chopped by an iron-headed axe. His typhoon-dance only lasted a few moments, then he stood alone among the fallen bodies of the drunken warriors. Twenty-nine knights of Taringol lay senseless across the plaza, a few moaning and trying unsuccessfully to right themselves on broken legs or arms. The horses stamped and neighed nervously, fearing perhaps that a lion had fallen into their midst and might decide next to dine on their salty flesh.
But Kantoh merely grabbed up the fallen couple, one by one, and carried them back into their house. By the time he emerged from the shattered doorway, it seemed the entire village of Five Trees had come out to stare at their savior. The old women smiled and reached to touch the hem of his robe, while the elderly men of the town offered smiles and bottles of rice wine for his pleasure, patting him on the back. Kantoh refused alcohol, and offered only his gentle smile to those who might have made him their king.
Anfai watched from the plaza’s edge as they swarmed about the humble priest, and a few youths began tying the soldiers with strong hemp cord, dragging them toward some sturdy warehouse that would serve as a jail. Anfai cared not to wonder what would happen to the cruel ones. She made her way through the crowd until she came near to Kantoh. The people praised him, and asked for more exhibitions of his fighting skill.
“You are a divine spirit, sent from the Dreaming Ones,” said a toothless codger from behind his long pipe.
Kantoh shook his head.
“You must be a sorcerer to lay these Taringol devils so low!” said another.
Again Kantoh denied this.
“You fight with invisible weapons!” said a young girl, grasping his hand in her own.
Kantoh shook his head, gently removing himself from her grasp. Finally, he saw Anfai, and came toward her. The crowd parted as he walked, like wheat before a strong breeze.
“Your uncle?” he asked her, calm as ever.
All eyes fell on her now, and little Ond awoke, crying for his dinner. With the amazed throng following them, they went toward the house of her uncle. His youngest son, Din, answered their knocking and admitted them. He could barely keep the townspeople from charging inside as well, following their hero.
Uncle Dyama was a fat man with a pleasant face, and he looked just as Anfai remembered him from three years earlier, the last time she had visited Five Trees with her aging mother. Two years before she married a husband that would soon be dragged off to war. Dyama welcomed her with smiles and hugs, and he greeted Kantoh much like the rest of the village had—for he had seen the dance of the white flame from the balcony of his third story.
Dyama’s three sons shared his house, along with many servants who helped them work the orchards. He wept when Anfai told him about the death of her village. They dined on fresh peaches, roast pork, and goat-cheese. Kantoh ate only fruit, and would drink only water. He explained no more of himself to Dyama than he had to Anfai, and the farmer was too polite to demand more information.
“You have won the hearts of the village,” Dyama said. “They love you. And I love you, for bringing my niece safely to me, not to mention my precious little grandnephew. Stay here with us as long as you like.”
Kantoh thanked him. “Tomorrow I must depart, but tonight I accept the honor of your hospitality.”
Anfai looked at the priest. It seemed she had known him for years instead of merely days. “Can you not stay a while longer?” she asked.
Kantoh blinked at her. Was that a strange passion glowing in his dark eyes? Or was it simply the odd gaze of a man unused to being in the company of others?
“Ond will miss you,” said Anfai, offering him the baby to hold.
Kantoh turned his smile toward the infant and accepted it into his arms. Ond squealed in delight.
“I... will miss him too,” said the priest. “But I must search until I find the place for which I am looking.”
“And what place is that?” asked Dyama innocently, pouring himself another cup of wine.
A hush fell across the room, and the crackling of the fireplace filled the air.
“A place where the white lotus grows.”
Kantoh said nothing else about his destination and, having no wish to insult him, the family asked him nothing more about it.
***
In the orange glow of early morning, the house of Dyama was besieged by a crowd of men demanding to see the stranger. To preserve the order of Dyama’s quiet house, Kantoh agreed to meet them on the outside steps. He walked out to stand between the twin marble statues that Dyama’s great grandfather had sculpted into the likeness of the sleeping dragons who lay at the heart of the world. Anfai observed this audience from the window of the room her uncle had provided.
The young men of Five Trees fell to their knees before Kantoh, who almost looked embarrassed by their worship. “O, mighty warrior,” one of them cried. “You are great and we are ignorant and helpless. Teach us to fight like you—to leap like the dancing tiger, to move like the cutting wind, to defend our honor and the honor of our homes!”
“Save us from the aggressions of evil men!” said another.
“We have no weapons, nor any art to forge them,” another pleaded. “But you have shown us that we don’t need weapons to fight. Please—teach us your wisdom!”
“We will give you all that our village has to offer—a wife, children, our fields, what little gold we have,” someone cried. “Our village shall be yours, only teach us to be tigers!”
Kantoh called for silence. “Would you trade your entire world for a set of claws, had I the ability to give them? This would be a sore bargain.”
“Yes!” someone cried. “For what good are we if we cannot defend what is ours?”
Kantoh shook his head. “I cannot teach you to be men. That you are already. Nor can I teach you to be tigers, for I am also merely a man.”
“Teach us to fight!” said a young boy, brandishing his fists.
“Better I should teach an eagle how to fly,” said Kantoh. “Or a fish to swim. Be content that you are a peace-loving folk, far from the blazing fields of war.”
“How can we be content, when we live in fear of deadly men?” someone asked.
Kantoh shrugged. “Do not ask me for wisdom,” he said, “but seek it on your own.”
“Where can we find such wisdom?” asked one.
“In your own hearts,” said Kantoh.
“The Sons of the Spear care not for our hearts,” yelled an old man at the fringe of the crowd. “Until they are torn beating from our chests.”
Anfai shivered at her window. Had the destroyers of her village followed her here, bringing their bloodlust into these serene hills? Was there any place left in all the wide-scattered lands of Zin that was safer for simple folk?
“I am sorry,” said Kantoh. “I cannot teach you to be what you are not.”
Kantoh came back inside and went alone into Dyama’s courtyard, where he sat in the shadow of a small fountain, crossed his legs, and closed his eyes. Anfai found him like that an hour later, tranquil as stone. Today she wore a silk gown that had once belonged to her aunt, patterned with emerald vines and saffron butterflies. She had bathed, and fixed her hair into a delicate mass resembling a black, iridescent pyramid. She felt like a real woman again, for the first time since... since her husband had been dragged away to die on the Taringol border.
She sat next to Kantoh, though he hardly seemed aware of her presence. She waited, unwilling to disturb his strange sleep, or whatever state of mind he took upon himself at these times. But his eyes opened, and he stared at her in her unaccustomed garb of feminine prosperity. His eyes sparkled with miniature stars.
“I must go,” he said.
“I know,” she told him. “To search for your white lotus.”
He nodded. “You... look lovely.”
She blushed. “How will you know when you have found your sacred ground?”
“I will know.”
“Will you?” she said. She leaned forward and kissed him gently on the lips.
His expression became one of complete befuddlement. Had he never been kissed before? She supposed he really did grow up in some monastery or temple where a female presence was unknown. He would not have looked any more stunned if someone had stabbed him with a sharp knife. She wrapped her slender arms about his neck. The air between their eyes glimmered with an unknown energy. She wished he would stay, knowing her wish was selfish. But she wanted him to stay for her, and for Ond. Perhaps she could give him good reason to forget his white lotus.
Again, she touched her lips to his. They lingered for a while there beside the bubbling fountain, sharing the moist secrets of their mouths. Then she stood, took him by the hand, and led him up the stairs to her room. Ond was with Uncle Dyama, so her pillowy bed was empty and warm. Childlike, wordless, wrapped in a spell of mysterious urgency, Kantoh followed her into the room. She undressed, then drew him onto the bed.
