Altan and Lhandon had done a decent job of shoring up the place. None of the glass was exposed, and from what I could tell the side entrances were barricaded too. I didn’t know how the two had mustered the strength to push one of the snow lion statues in front of the entry door, but they had.
“I rang the bell,” I told him. “Did you hear it from down here?”
“No, unfortunately, I didn’t,” he said. “But it isn’t my ears that matter; hopefully at least one of the hermits comes to our aid. And you managed to capture a spirit?”
“Actually, I ended up making a friend,” I said, taking the jar from my robe and unscrewing the top.
Tashi took shape, far enough to my right that I couldn’t feel his flames.
“A fire spirit?” Lhandon asked, gasping.
“It is nice to meet you,” Tashi said, bowing his flaming head. “Please call me Tashi.”
“Same to you, and please call me Lhandon,” the monk said, returning the bow. “The reason I’m gasping is…”
He bit his lip for a moment, running his hand along his ponytail as he looked down at the pavement. Naturally, I looked to the same place that he was looking and saw the crater that I had caused in my fight against the Exonerated One.
“He’s back,” Altan said, stepping out of the monastery. It was nice seeing him in robes, the former slave carrying an empty pail. He went to a dragon-headed spout near the back entrance and started to get some water.
“We’ll be there in just a moment,” Lhandon called over to him. He returned his focus to me. “I’m just going to come out and say it. I have been spending more time in the library, and I found one of the original texts on a Golden One.”
“More prophecy stuff?” I asked him.
“I’d only heard stories, but I had never read the actual text, and what the Exonerated One has is not complete. There are other portions of it. But the scroll he has tells of an outsider taking a powerful weapon and befriending animals and spirits.”
“I’m no different than anyone else here, aside from my origins. In fact, if we were to compare ourselves on the path, you would be up here,” I told him, lifting my hand, “and I would be down here. There’s always prophecies that talk about some outsider coming in and changing things. That’s a trope. But I don’t want to be thought of as that. I’m Nick. And I know, I’ve exhibited some power. But that doesn’t mean anything.”
Tashi chuckled. “Such humility, you’d think he had just come down from a silent retreat.”
Lhandon nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. Fine, Nick, I won’t refer to you as Nick the Golden One, or anything like that, but I will treat you as a reborn student who has now reached the stage of Wheel with a Rusty Axle. And I will say that you have shown up from someplace no one has ever heard of, you can talk to birds, you have a powerful weapon and you have befriended a fire spirit. Coincidence? Sure. Let’s just go with coincidence.”
“It’s usually easier that way.”
He turned to the monastery. “I was about to prepare dinner. Perhaps you would like to join me, and tell me of your journey to the Hermit Bell and how you came across Tashi.”
Tashi and I followed Lhandon inside. Altan passed by us again, and took a step back once he saw the fire spirit. He continued on his way, bringing more water in. The window was open, and a few minutes later Roger appeared, the handsome bird excited to see me.
“I’m surprised I didn’t catch you while I was out on patrol,” he said, hopping around on the countertop.
“You can only see so much at one time,” I told him, “and I’m wearing brown, so I blend in a bit. Also, this is Tashi. Tashi, Roger.”
“Hey,” Roger said, not at all disturbed by the fire spirit.
“It is a pleasure to meet you.”
“You two can understand each other?” I asked.
“Yes,” Tashi said, Roger nodding as well.
“I remain the only person not in the loop,” Lhandon lamented. “But it would be unwise to complain about it.”
“I love this guy,” Roger said, cackling. “He’s been a nervous wreck since you left.”
“What did he say?” Lhandon asked.
“He said you’ve been a gracious host in my absence.”
“Nonsense. If the bird told you that, he’s lying. I’ve been an utter mess,” the monk said, focused again on cutting carrots. “Now, tell me about yourself, Tashi.”
The fire spirit launched into the explanation of what he’d been doing at the Hermit Bell, and why he decided to join with me after hearing of my struggles.
“Volunteering yourself to the service of someone like Nick, and for that matter, this monastery, is the type of selfless act that will lead to a rebirth outside of the Underworld,” Lhandon said. “I’m sure you are aware of this.”
“Mildly aware,” Tashi told him. “But I’m more interested in doing good, and for the last couple of centuries, I thought that good would come from guarding the bell and attacking any treasure hunters that tried to steal it.”
“So you’ve grown bored,” Roger said.
“Sure, that too. I was alive a long time ago, nearly a thousand years, and as much as I would like to say the Kingdom of Lhasa has changed since then, it really hasn’t. People are still iniquitous; people still only look out for themselves; and there has been little advancement. If I am to eventually be reborn here, I would like that to have changed by then.”
“Yes, a very noble thing to say,” Lhandon told him. “I can only imagine what it would be like to look back and see nothing had changed in such a long time. Hopefully, true change is on the way, lasting and inspiring change.”
Once we were done in the kitchen, we moved to the dining room, where Altan joined us.
“Tomorrow’s the big day,” Lhandon started to say. “Or maybe it’s the next day. Either way, they should reach here soon.”
Tashi was now back in my pocket, but I did feel him warm up a bit, reminding me of the discussion we’d had during our journey back from the Hermit Bell.
“Actually, I know that we already have a plan in motion here, but if I may…” I cleared my throat and pushed my plate away. “After discussing our plans with Tashi, I’ve come up with an idea that is radically different than what we originally conceptualized. I know we went to the trouble of ringing the Hermit Bell, but just hear me out here.”
“Go on,” Lhandon said, setting down his piece of bread.
I brought my hands to the table, drumming my fingers for a moment. “It’s going to be risky, but it may give us the edge we need…”
Chapter Thirty-Five: Runic Combat
“I am surprised Lhandon agreed to it,” Tashi said. We were in the courtyard now, a star-filled night above us, the moon absent. Lhandon was getting packed up, as was Altan, the former slave even more reluctant than the monk was about our plan.
“I am surprised as well.”
“I kind of knew he would go for it,” Roger said.
Tashi laughed. “You seem to know him quite well.”
“Oh yeah, the monk and I go way back. Basically, I met him on a mountain and then we came back here together. So maybe not that far back. And he can’t understand me. But that’s water under the bridge by this point.”
“But I know what I saw,” I reminded the two. “Something has possessed Madame Mabel, and that something is worth taking down.”
I sat in front of Tashi, the fire spirit illuminating a small portion of the courtyard. He could control how bright he got, similar to dimming a lightbulb. At his current level, he was hardly bright enough to illuminate some of the branches of the trees that surrounded the courtyard.
There was something definitely eerie about it, ethereal too.
“Since you are familiar with some of the script,” Tashi started to say, “or at least you’re able to use a few runes, maybe some of this will make sense to you.”
“Should Lhandon be here for this?” I asked him.
“Actually, that wouldn�
�t be a bad idea.”
“I’ll get him,” Roger said, taking off toward the monastery.
The bird entered through the only window that wasn’t boarded up and returned with Lhandon a few minutes later.
“It seems as if I’m starting to understand Roger,” the monk joked as he took a seat next to me. He had to waddle a bit, but once he was in a good position, he nodded up at the fire spirit, a bit out of breath, but content nonetheless.
“Where do you think the old characters came from?” Tashi asked both of us. “I’m not talking about the new, simplified characters. I’m talking about the really old ones, the characters that are used to form runes.”
“Well, eventually written language was needed…”
“Incorrect,” Tashi told Lhandon. “I mean, it is true that the written language has helped commerce, but the original characters, the ones that hold magical power when used correctly, these actually come from combat.”
“From combat?” I asked as Roger landed on my shoulder.
Lhandon shook his head. “How is that even possible?”
“Let’s start on some of the easier characters,” the fire spirit said, flaring up a bit. “Both of you know the scripts for Ra?”
I glanced at Lhandon, trying to remember what it looked like. The image came to me, a downward stroke with a circle above it.
“I remember,” I said as Tashi lifted a flaming hand from his form, a shoulder and below bubbling into place as small plumes of blue fire took shape.
Another hand appeared, and once they were both bright, he performed a quick downward punch with his left fist followed by a right punch that moved right over his previous strike.
In doing so, he left a fiery trail of the movement he had made, and sure enough, it looked just like Ra.
“Oh my…” Lhandon said, bringing his hand to his mouth. “Roger, will you please get Altan? He needs to be part of this as well.”
“Hey, just because…” Roger lifted off my shoulder. “Fine, fine,” he said as he flew back to the monastery.
“And all the characters are like that? I’m sorry, but this is something that I’ve never heard before. What about…” Lhandon thought for a moment. “What about a more complicated one, like Ge?”
Before I could try to figure out what ‘Ge’ looked like, legs started to grow out of Tashi’s form. He brought them wide and traced his hands upward into a flattened U-shape, and then straight down, throwing them wide, followed by an elaborate leg maneuver.
“Amazing,” Lhandon said after the character solidified in the air, leaving another fiery trail.
“Some of these are more artistic than they are practical,” Tashi explained, “but they all are forms of an ancient combat system.”
Altan stepped out of the monastery and quickly made his way over to us. He took a seat near me and looked up at the character still glowing in the air.
“I’ve never seen that character before,” he said.
“You will learn it one day,” Lhandon told him. “Tell me an old character that you do know, just not a simplified one.”
“Lha?” Altan offered. “I think everyone knows that.”
Tashi took a wide leg position. He lifted his leg and perform two rapid-fire kicks about a foot apart from one another followed up by four-pointed fist attack, cutting his hands down into a V-shape. Sure enough, it made a square with a line attached to it, two slash marks beneath it.
“Crazy,” I said, instantly recognizing the character.
“They all work that way,” Tashi explained, “and that’s where all of the ancient characters came from. From combat. This is why many of them, when transmitted correctly or offered to the right person, still carry some power.”
“What about actual runic spells?” Lhandon asked. “Surely those didn’t come from combat.”
“Those get a little more complicated, but from what I’ve learned, characters with subscripts and superscripts came later, which is why they are cast by hand. It’s faster to trace something with a finger than to go through a full-body motion.”
He went on to demonstrate a few other characters, as all of us watched in awe. Lhandon identified the characters as they fizzled out. Roger sat on my shoulder throughout the entire demonstration, clucking every now and then as he shook his head.
“That sure is something,” the bird said at least three times.
Once Tashi was finished, he bowed to us. The three of us stood and returned the bow, Roger also bowing his head while still perched on my shoulder.
“I appreciate your transmission,” Lhandon said. “I can literally feel the karmic forces coming off you through the knowledge that you’ve offered us. The characters are based on combat. Who would have thought? I have so many questions, but I will reserve them for another time. Perhaps if one of the hermits comes…” He shook his head. “That’s right, we have other plans now.”
“I’m sure we’ll encounter another hermit,” I told Lhandon. “Baatar said he’d visit after he finished his meditation.”
“Hopefully,” the monk said with a tinge of apprehension in his voice.
“Thank you, again,” Altan told Tashi. “It will be a while before I can truly understand what you’ve shown us here, but I appreciate the transmission.”
Rather than have everyone continue to humbly thank each other, I reminded the group that we had an early start.
“Always a realist,” Roger said, making Tashi laugh again.
“The bird is very funny.” The fire spirit started to grow smaller, to the point that he fit back into the small glass jar in my hand.
“You don’t have to stay in there, you know,” I started to tell him.
“Actually, it may be better if you’re just simply around the monastery tonight,” Lhandon said, “just in case we have any unwanted visitors.”
“As you wish,” Tashi said, genieing back out of the glass jar.
“And you’re sure this passageway you told us of leads all the way to Nagchu, right?” Lhandon asked as we all made our way back to the monastery.
“If it is still there, then I’m sure. And I don’t believe it has disappeared. Nagchu wasn’t always a farming city near the sea. Thousands of years ago, it was a place for treasure hunters, far enough away from the rest of Lhasa that we didn’t have to worry about them finding us. To get there, we would make our way through passageways that were cut into the mountains by dragons. The passageways are much faster, and it should only take us six or seven hours at the most to reach the city.”
“Any idea where it lets out at?” I asked him.
It was something I had been meaning to ask earlier.
“Actually, if I’m not mistaken, the tunnel lets out near the back of the plantation, which according to you isn’t very far from Madame Mabel’s estate.”
“It’s going to be one hell of a fight tomorrow, especially now that we’re going to Nagchu,” Roger said as we entered the monastery. “I wish I had a way to sharpen my dagger in here.”
“I just worry about the monastery while we are gone,” Lhandon said, which was the same concern he’d had when we discussed our change of plans over dinner.
“Wait, don’t you still have that ice spirit?” I asked him.
“Of course I do, he’s right here,” Lhandon said, patting at the front of his robes.
“A perfect spirit to guard the monastery,” Tashi added. “I will meet this ice spirit in the morning, and make sure they are able to do the job. I know they are technically your servant now, Exalted One, considering you have captured it, but ice spirits can always be tricky. It’s best that we are sure.”
Lhandon took one last look up at the monastery. It was the next morning now, and the five of us were just about ready to go.
“It’ll still be here,” I told him. “Mabel’s forces don’t usually travel with a monk, right?”
Altan shook his head. “They don’t practice the Way, at least the military leaders don’t. And if it’s Sona, she likely w
on’t know what to do against an ice spirit like this. Remember, she’s a city girl, a former slave; the mysteries of the mountains around Lhasa are likely things she’s never heard of or dealt with before.”
There was a chill in the air from the ice spirit that Lhandon had captured. The spirit had begrudgingly cooperated, especially after speaking with Tashi, and Lhandon had also left a special message for any hermit that made it here.
I could see the ice spirit now, ballooned to an impossibly large size as it hovered in the air above the monastery, the morning sun cutting arcs of light through it.
As we started down the steps, our path lined with blue prayer flags beating in the frigid wind, my thoughts returned to the squad we were bringing to Madame Mabel’s plantation. A dagger-wielding bird? An apprehensive monk? A former slave? A random guy from Massachusetts? A fire spirit trying to atone for his soul?
If we were lucky, Madame Mabel’s forces would mostly be out on patrol looking for me. That or going to Bamda to start a war, leaving us with whatever had stayed behind.
Either way, we were in for a hell of a fight.
Tashi grew in size once we reached the bottom of the steps, careful not to ignite any of the trees around us.
“It’s just over there,” he said, pointing toward a series of rolling hills.
While it may have appeared close, it took us another fifty minutes to make our way down the hill, then up another, avoiding some of the sharper rocks, until we came to a bush covered space between the hills, large trees over it.
“Is there a rune or something that you need to open it?” Lhandon asked, frowning at the underbrush.
“No, treasure hunters were usually too busy trying to flee someone through this exit to have time to cast a rune. You see, while it looks obvious now, there are over two dozen spots just like this in these hills. The same style trees, the same style of bushes, although now, it’s been a thousand years, and everything has grown out even more.”
“Then how do you know this is the right spot?” Altan asked.
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