by Ryan Kirk
Heart of Defiance
Ryan Kirk
Copyright © 2019 by Waterstone Media
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
For Micah
1
Bai came to awareness slowly. Her head hurt, pounding as though she’d been hit by a rock. She took a deep, shuddering breath, groaning with agony.
It felt like a boulder lay on her chest, her lungs tightly constricted, unable to expand.
She clawed her way to wakefulness, fighting against the pull and temptation of endless rest. She coughed and spit, her mouth dirty, dust thick in the air.
Bai tried to remember. Where was she? What had happened? Her mind spun in circles but provided no answers. She felt as though she was waking from a deep slumber, dazed and disoriented. Yet this waking came with enormous pain.
She was not in her bed, and no answers came, no matter how much time passed. Each breath came a little easier, but her memories were as elusive as ghosts.
Bai scrunched her eyes and blinked them open. She was face down in the grass, green blades gently stabbing at her face. She groaned again, every passing moment bringing another wave of needle-like pain. Her entire body felt like it was being poked at with thousands of tiny pins.
It would be easier just to lie there, to close her eyes and return to sleep, maybe to never wake again. Her eyelids drooped and she forced them to stay open, the effort no less than carrying a full bucket of water from the well to her home. Her body protested every movement. Perhaps if she just rested for a little while longer. She surrendered to her exhaustion, her eyes closing as she took a long, deep breath.
She saw her mother’s serious face in her mind’s eye, the memory flooding her with distress. Something had happened. If she hurt this badly, was her mother okay? Was her mother even near?
The questions demanded answers, forced her to open her eyes. She pushed herself up to her hands and knees, her head swimming with even that small feat. She shifted her weight back and sat on her knees, her back straight, just the way her mother had taught her.
Bai looked around, catching her breath from the exertion. She didn’t recognize her surroundings. At times, the scene hinted at past familiarity, but that was impossible. She’d never seen devastation like this before. Not even in her nightmares.
The buildings around her had been flattened, as though a giant hand had come from the sky and slapped them down. Broken timbers and collapsed roofs were all that her tired eyes could make out.
After a few seconds, she had to close her eyes again. Sleep demanded its due. Her arms hung limp at her sides, and although she knew she needed to stand, to search the area for answers, the very idea of that level of exertion made her want to collapse in exhaustion.
But she’d been tired before. Often, she and her mother had worked late, mending clothes that others had needed stitched immediately. They’d worked through the night, dim candles and the moonlight pouring through the open window their only sources of illumination. Bai had suffered through sleepless nights before and still worked without problem the next day. Why was she so tired now?
And why couldn’t she remember? The longer she remained awake, the more that question frightened her. Her other memories seemed fine. She remembered the weathered lines of her mother’s face, aged too early from a life of labor and fear. She remembered the feel of silk against her hands as she worked the fabric into a design suitable for some of the wealthiest men and women in Galan. So why didn’t she know where she was or what had happened?
Bai pressed her eyes together, willing her full memory to return, but fortune did not smile on her. After a dozen frustrating seconds of blinding nothingness, she gave up and opened her eyes again.
When she did, she realized that there was something vaguely familiar about the place where she sat. Her mind wasn’t tricking her. She knew this place. She fought her way to her feet. She wobbled for a moment, her balance not quite centered, before the world finally steadied.
Bai slowly turned around, focusing not on the destroyed buildings but on the spaces between them. Off in the distance, familiar mountains stabbed into the cloudy evening sky. They were the same mountains she had looked at every day of her life, appearing no different than before.
Her stomach twisted, realizing a sickening thought moments before she was consciously aware of it. Her gaze traveled down to the ruins around her, marking out the locations of the foundations. She knew this place.
This was home.
She was in the market square of Galan, a place where she’d spent no small part of her life.
A wave of nausea threatened to send her back to her knees, but she put her hands on her thighs, barely managing to remain standing. Her stomach heaved, but nothing came out. They hadn’t had much money for food lately.
New memories surfaced. Boys playing catch with a ball in this square. Her mother had sent her out to purchase supplies, and there had been someone else. An angry man?
The memories stopped there, a solid door slamming between her and the knowledge of what happened. She poked, prodded, and pushed, but her memory refused to cooperate.
Her dry mouth brought her attention back to the moment. She was thirsty, as though she’d worked all day in the sun without so much as a sip of water. There would be water skins back at their house, only a block away.
Bai’s heart pounded. Her mother!
She turned around, dreading the answer. No houses stood for at least three blocks. Bai scrambled over and around the broken buildings. There was no clear path to where her house had once stood. Broken wood trembled under her heavy, unbalanced footsteps.
As the shock wore off, she noticed more details. She had thought she was alone, but that wasn’t quite true. There were bodies, covered in dust, all around her. She saw limbs and faces, a few of them immediately recognizable. Why hadn’t she seen any bodies in the square? With a mounting sense of terror, she struggled forward.
Finding her house wasn’t as easy as she’d expected. When all the buildings had collapsed, the narrow separation that existed between the homes had been destroyed. Small pockets of individual lives had been replaced by one communal disaster.
She saw the neighbor next door, the young boy who had believed that someday he and Bai would marry. He’d courted her endlessly even though she was ten years older than him. She’d tolerated his affection, smiling and nodding when he spoke about their future together. She’d thought of it as harmless fun, and observed that the dream had given the young boy a hope for his coming days. His unblinking gaze now stared endlessly at the sky, a thin layer of dust obscuring his brown eyes.
Bai found her house, or what remained, at least. Seized by a sudden burst of energy, she frantically threw aside rubble, searching the ruins for an answer. She tried to call out for her mother, but the words caught in her parched throat. She focused on digging, the broken wood tearing through her calloused hands.
Had the bandits done this? She’d heard plenty of rumors over the years of the men and women who lived high in the mountains, somehow exempt from monastic oversight. Patrols rarely ventured that way. Outside of the farms and forests that buffered Bai’s village from the mountains, there was little of the empire beyond her home. Sometimes, one heard stories of the bandits coming down from the mountains, killing and slaughtering innocents. She’d always dismissed such stories as fancy, but who else could have done something so terrible?
Or had it been the temperamental monks? They had the power to do someth
ing like this. Bai loathed and feared the monks in equal measure. Their demands, as of late, had become increasingly onerous. Perhaps they had simply decided to destroy Galan. She couldn’t imagine why, but who knew what madness lay in the heart and mind of a monk?
Her thoughts came to a crashing halt when she uncovered a hand, one of the fingers bent permanently at an unnatural angle. For a few moments, she stopped digging, afraid of what she might uncover. Then she came to her senses. Perhaps there was still hope. She threw some of the broken wood behind her, grunting with the effort as she pulled debris off the victim.
Bai sank to her knees when she uncovered more of the arm. A bracelet rested on the wrist, a bracelet that Bai had made and given to her mother on her fortieth birthday. She uttered a wordless cry and grasped the hand. It was cold to the touch, lifeless.
She clasped the hand with both of her own, tears soaking into the dust below. Her mouth hung open, a silent scream of loss ripping her heart in half.
Now she was alone.
Her mother had been the one who kept her safe, had taught her how to survive in a heartless world. She’d chiseled Bai into stone, quiet and nearly impervious to the trials of life.
But even stone could shatter.
A sudden shiver seized Bai, causing her to release her mother’s hand and wrap her arms tightly around herself. A glance at the sky told her night was coming. She’d left home in the morning, she remembered. Had most of the day passed?
She realized then that the sounds she’d grown up with, the sounds of people bustling back and forth, were gone. Outside of the whisper of the breeze cutting through the broken homes, there wasn’t another voice to be heard. No cries of agony marked the places where victims lay. She was alone, completely. No one else had survived.
Why? Why did she have to continue to suffer when her mom had gone on without her?
Her limbs felt like tree trunks rooted to the ground, but beyond her exhaustion and the fresh cuts on her hands, she wasn’t even injured. How had she lived when all that she loved and knew had died?
Then she heard voices. It took her a few seconds to realize what they were. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she had heard someone else speaking. She licked her lips and swallowed, preparing to yell for them. Then a terrible thought occurred to her. What if she was listening to the bandits from the mountains, back to finish whatever horrible work they had started? Or worse, what if they were monks?
Even if the voices were benevolent, what good would her yelling do? Everyone was dead. Rescuers would discover the same soon enough, with or without her.
A memory of her mother came back to her. A memory from the day Bai had been beaten for trying to defend a household servant. The servant, a young boy, had been accused of muddying the master’s boots. Bai had known the accusation wasn’t true. The master’s son had worn the boots and gotten them dirty. She’d spoken up in the servant’s defense and had coughed up blood for two days as her reward. The master hadn’t taken kindly to her pointing fingers at his son.
Bai’s mother had tended her well enough, but her words had been stern.
“You need to learn silence, little one,” she had said as she bathed her daughter that night. “The best servant is invisible. If people don’t see you, and if they don’t hear you, they won’t hurt you.”
Her mother had been right, as she always was. Speaking out now would be just as foolish. Who knew what trouble she would court if she brought people’s attention her way?
Bai looked around. The voices came closer, some of them shouting. She didn’t have much time. Before she left, she pulled the bracelet from her mother’s wrist. It seemed pitifully little, but Bai wanted something to remember her mother by.
She found a gap, a dark shadow where she could hide. It would have to do. She scrambled and squeezed in, curling into the fetal position so she wouldn’t be seen.
Bai fought to calm her ragged breathing. With every passing second, she became more convinced that the voices were after her. They sounded angry, and they kept coming closer. Bai closed her eyes, hoping she wouldn’t be found.
2
Delun stared across the stone courtyard at his opponent, a monk wearing simple training robes. Though the monk tried to look outwardly composed, Delun could easily see the small physical tics that betrayed the boy’s true feelings. He saw the monk’s eyes dart back and forth, noticed that the monk was breathing quickly through his mouth even though the match had not yet started. Delun imagined he could almost feel the monk’s elevated heart rate.
Just as telling as the monk’s fear was the attitude of the circle of monks surrounding them, each holding a shield of energy. Though he couldn’t afford to give the circle the same attention he did the monk in front of him, Delun was observant enough to notice the sly grins, the mirth in the eyes of the onlookers as they glanced back and forth. Several of them were a moment away from laughing out loud. Many of them had been through this trial themselves and delighted in being a part of the circle rather than inside it.
Beads of sweat gathered on the young monk’s forehead, even though the air was cool, thanks to the elevation of the mountains.
Delun knew his reputation well enough. He rarely sparred with other monks anymore for that very reason. The others sparred to train, but Delun had left the walls of the monastery often enough to see the foolishness in that approach. Sparring to train ingrained bad habits. A killing blow was withheld. Punches were pulled. The body remembered. These were mistakes that could get him killed on the other side of these thick stone walls.
Delun didn’t spar to train. He sparred to win.
The other monks knew that fact well. They’d been on the receiving end of enough of his beatings to understand. Now, sparring Delun had become something of a rite of passage, an unofficial test for young monks about to take their final vows. Survive Delun, the argument went, and you could survive anything.
Delun loathed the practice. It wasted time and there was much to be done. But Taio, their abbot, had insisted on this concession to the other monks. It built community and strengthened the order. Delun didn’t agree, but he never disobeyed a request from Taio.
The young monk’s weight shifted and Delun focused his attention sharply on the boy. The monk’s energy grew as it was focused. The hopeful warrior made two signs with his right hand and a single sign with his left. Delun fought the urge to shake his head. The boy was far too eager and too confident in his own superiority. Hearing rumors of a strong opponent didn’t dissuade a young man. It only encouraged him. Delun understood. He’d been a young man with a point to prove once, too.
He still wished the trainees would exercise more restraint.
Ever since the Battle of Jihan, twenty years ago, single-handed techniques had become standard in the monasteries. Before, a single-handed technique had been considered inferior. With rare exceptions, they generated less focused attacks and shields, and were typically weaker than a sign’s two-handed counterpart. The only advantage had been that a monk could prepare two techniques at the same time.
Prior to Jihan, no one had used two single-handed techniques simultaneously in combat, though. It was thought doing so required too much focus. On the rare occasions when monks had dueled, only two-handed techniques had been used.
Sometimes all it took to change the world was for someone to demonstrate what was possible.
In Jihan, two masters had fought, masters who had both been able to summon two single-handed techniques with ease. Since then, hundreds of monks followed in the footsteps of those infamous warriors.
Delun considered such a path a mistake. The true path sat, as it often did, between the extremes, a place of balance. Using two single-handed techniques could be useful, and should be trained. But Delun believed that in battle, such techniques should only be used by masters to whom such techniques had become as natural as breathing.
The monk in front of him was a perfect example. He had an attack and a shield prepared, but both were wea
k, and even though only a second or two had passed since the trainee formed the signs, he was already struggling to maintain the focus required to hold such techniques. Far better to commit to one move done well than two performed poorly.
The monk leveled his right hand at Delun, aiming his attack. Delun stood perfectly still, balanced exactly between his feet. He made no move to defend himself. But if the trainee believed Delun was unprepared, the boy was a fool.
Delun saw the way the monk braced himself, giving Delun a moment of warning.
It was all he needed.
Delun slid to the side as the monk released his attack. The energy manipulations of the monks were invisible to the eye, but Delun could feel the wave of energy tear through the place he had just stood. The attack glanced off his shoulder, barely affecting his balance. The rest of the energy wave was absorbed by a monk in the circle, holding a shield to keep the sparring match from destroying the rest of the monastery.
These trials were no picnic for the monks in the circle either. They all used the first and easiest shielding sign to create the circle of shields, but maintaining it for the duration of the combat, especially if one was absorbing blows, was no small feat. That was why a group of monks stood behind the circle, ready to step in and replace a friend at a moment’s notice.
Delun stepped toward the boy, closing the distance with precise, calculated steps. The younger trainee, fearing an imminent attack, held up his left hand and released the shield he had prepared.
To the boy’s credit, his attack and defense had been perfect. The boy followed his training, and his master should have been proud of the boy’s responses. But Delun didn’t fight like a monk, and existed to remind the monks there were other paths to victory. If he believed this trial accomplished anything, it was to prove, as physically and dramatically as possible, that the monks weren’t as infallible as they thought. If he could open their eyes, this farce was worth it.
