Eternity's Blade, page 4
“We always have need of more Traders.” An-go’yi’ki smiled. “Not all return each season.”
“And too few? Could a Rebirth wake without its vessel?”
“I don’t know.” An-go’yi’ki frowned. “The Mists remake the mind. But without a new body . . .” He kneeled to face Soh’shoro, grasping his shoulders gently. “You really are curious, aren’t you? Always asking questions.” He hesitated. “It’s why I brought you here. So we might speak, just the two of us.” His voice dropped. “Away from your father.”
Soh’shoro grew guarded. “What do you want?”
“To warn you.”
A chill shot down his spine. “This is about what you told Father in the waterfall gardens, isn’t it? That something is wrong with the Valley?”
“Our paradise is Eternal, Soh’shoro. But Eternity is maintained at a cost. With carefully repeated rituals like these.” He swept his arm across the silent figures and their cooing futures. “For a long time now, I have feared there are those who want to destroy this balance. To break the Valley itself.” An-go’yi’ki leaned close, whispering into Soh’shoro’s ear. “You must be careful, Prince. There is a traitor in the Quo’dai-ma House. One who . . .”
“Soh’shoro!” A sharp call came from across the courtyard. And Kenwu sidled between the pair. “There you are! Always sneaking off! Why didn’t you wait at the betrothal pavilion?”
“It’s my fault,” An-go’yi’ki soothed. “I thought to spend a little time with the prince.”
“He should not be here!” Kenwu snapped. “And you should not be traveling without your retinue!”
The boy glanced curiously up at the Ang’soon, realizing his earlier lie.
“Remember your station,” An-go’yi’ki warned the attendant imperiously. But his anger quickly melted. “Though you are right, Kenwu. I should not leave my sister unattended for so long.” He turned once more to Soh’shoro, pale face creasing. “Remember what I said, will you?” He winked. Then his bright parasol flashed wide, burying his face beneath its twirling violet. “Be careful, prince.”
And An-go’yi’ki strode back toward the Palace gardens.
“We must return too, Soh’shoro,” Kenwu insisted. “Your father doesn’t want you here.”
But the boy hesitated, imagining the courtier’s corpse among the waiting Rebirths. A sudden hope dawned.
“The courtier I killed. He’ll be all right soon, won’t he? He’ll wake in a new body, like everyone else?”
“Keep your voice down!” Kenwu caught the child’s gaze, paralyzing him. Now he spoke barely louder than a whisper. “You think Obajen-mahoe didn’t look? He prayed every day she’d return, like the rest. Every day, Soh’shoro.”
The prince did not understand.
“What you do . . . It’s not part of our cycle. You take, and Eternity itself dies.” Kenwu shook his head. “So no, prince. That courtier will not be Reborn. Nor will anyone else you cut. That is your power. And your burden.”
What am I? Soh’shoro’s jaw tightened with new resolve. For he was tired of not understanding, of being cloistered inside the Palace and kept from the Valley’s secrets. The princess’s words reverberated in his mind like the beat of a festival drum: You know nothing of this world.
And Soh’shoro decided. “Father doesn’t know I’m here, does he?”
Kenwu nodded carefully.
“Then I want to follow the Rebirths. I’ve never been outside this Palace, let alone the City.”
“What did the Ang’soon say to you?”
But Soh’shoro ignored the question. “Please, Kenwu. Just as far as the City gates. Just for a moment. So I can see a little of the Valley . . .”
Kenwu shook his head. “With the Mists this unpredictable . . .”
“We can take my palanquin. Please!”
“Your palanquin would be noticed, prince.” But then Kenwu smiled conspiratorially. “A shrine, on the other hand . . .” And he pointed to one of the grand monuments, shuffling now atop bow-backed Traders into the outer courtyard, ready for its return to the Mists.
“Thank you, Kenwu!”
“I don’t like it.” The attendant held the boy’s gaze. “But you’d sneak off eventually anyway . . . You’ll say you ran away again, like with the courtier, if we’re caught?” The attendant waited for Soh’shoro to nod. “Come on then. Before I change my mind.”
More shrines danced into the courtyard, mingling with the Rebirthing litters. Soon bronze drums sounded, and a vanguard formed just before the Imperial gates. Kenwu guided Soh’shoro into the eerily silent crowds of Traders.
“I’ll follow just behind on foot,” Kenwu whispered. “Be quick. And ride only to the City gates, understand? You leap out, and I’ll get you.” But then he pressed Soh’shoro’s ri’shou’an into his childish hands, the silvered cranes of its locked ossuary flaring in the watery sunlight.
“You brought this?” The boy’s form bowed with the heavy weight of the blade’s ringed hilt. “You knew I’d ask this, Kenwu?”
His attendant looked away angrily. Twice he started to say something, then stopped. His face fluctuated between regret and fear.
He will change his mind.
And before Kenwu could say more, Soh’shoro vanished into the mass of jangling shrines. It took him only a moment to find a temporarily unattended structure and clamber inside. Here he crouched down between lily urns. The desiccated petals looked eerily like sloughed skin sealed away, but the scent dizzied him.
Soon Traders approached, accompanied by an epoxy priest. The holy man inspected the tattoos of the mute men carefully before noticing a blurry, chartreuse oval. He grabbed the Trader by the wrist, stretching his limb to inspect the fading ink more closely.
“Not clear enough,” the epoxy priest muttered. “Must fix for Mists.”
With practiced routine, he unsnapped a ritual satchel from his waist. Next the priest squeezed a gauze of petals, dripping its lily juice over a heavy needle. Last he lanced the tincture under the Trader’s skin. The Voice cried sharply, protesting this violence, and the boy winced. But the Trader seemed only to calm as the character on his arm sharpened into fresh definition.
“Good,” the priest concluded. “Enough ink now to leach slowly under skin. Hiding you.” He smiled. “Go! Go! Ready for Mists!”
Now the Traders swept up Soh’shoro’s shrine, gliding toward the City. The great gates of the Palace ground wide, almost one hundred hands tall, revealing only revelry beyond. Throughout the streets, onlookers danced, string music jostled, laughter and drinks spilled. The City blurred past, in row houses and slender gardens, bright hearths and silver chimes. In the distance, Soh’shoro could even make out the glimmering bronzes of the Trading District’s capsular domes. So he marveled and marveled, through stolen glances from the shrine’s narrow windows, at the joys of his expanding world.
At the limits of the City, wide bridges spanned the great rivers of the Valley’s basin. Beyond, the horizon stretched into ice-slick hills; next the cold stones of lower passes; then the slow ascent of rice paddies and terraced villages; last and always, the Mists. Everywhere, lilies glimmered like fresh fallen snow, their petals drifting with the wind.
Beautiful, Soh’shoro thought, gasping. And huge. The Valley would take countless days to cross. The vast expanse called to him. Just a moment longer. I must see more.
The shrine processed onto a massive, sloping bridge of polished tangerine lacquer. Great ritual arches sloped overhead in reversed crescents; their crossbeams settled thickly with crows cawing softly into the morning sunlight. The waters beneath raged with the angry currents of melting ice. Soh’shoro took one last look at the open roil of the grasslands beyond.
And then it was too late. The Voice cried out.
Like falling awake, Soh’shoro’s eyes rose to a figure poised atop one of the arches. Already the man was in motion, sliding down the sloping crest so lithely his arc reminded the prince of a shooting star. Then the figure leaped impossibly high, soaring across the gap to slam atop Soh’shoro’s shrine with the airy ease of a summer tern. The Traders buckled with the impact, panicking soundlessly as their grip on the support poles faltered. The bower twisted awkwardly.
With preternatural grace, the monk remained balanced atop the tumbling shrine, his ri’shou’an carving through its latticed window like a ray of sunlight. The man snaked a hand inside, seizing the boy. The structure crashed against the bridge moments later, almost knocking Soh’shoro senseless. Still, he recognized the veinless, polished skin of the Onan’ji.
“You came for me,” he gasped.
Without answering the monk struck him full force in the face, nearly blinding him.
Outside, Traders swarmed the upturned bower, but the Onan’ji had already pincered the child’s body beneath his arm, levering him outside. And like a mythical tiger waking, the Onan’ji leaped from the upturned carriage and over the bridge’s edge.
The pair plummeted. Air buffeted furiously. Then the monk and the boy vanished beneath icy foam.
Impact and cold shocked Soh’shoro awake. He tried to scream, forcing water into his lungs instead. He spasmed. But the Onan’ji’s confident hands surfaced the prince, even as they locked against his throat.
Above came shouting, then scrabbling footsteps. Soh’shoro was certain he could make out Kenwu’s voice, loudest of all. But none could make that leap, let alone risk the churning waters.
Already, the prince was lost.
Currents washed Soh’shoro and the monk against a wooded embankment. The Onan’ji released the boy here, letting him vomit the last of the water into the rocky shallows.
“You don’t need to fear. The violence is over.”
But Soh’shoro still clutched his blade.
Without hesitating the child drew the ri’shou’an from its crane-kissed ossuary, the sword glinting brilliantly like a gibbous moon. It was the first time he had ever unsheathed his mother’s blade. The brilliant symmetry of its wing-patterned tempering curved effortlessly into its narrowed edge, flaring the webbed gold patching its spine. And he struck with the same gesture, as fast as his small hands could manage. All he knew was that this might be his one chance to save himself.
The Voice cried, trying to guide him, priming his reflexes. But Soh’shoro was too young. He did not know how to listen. Nor could the prince balance the ri’shou’an’s heavy ring guard, which twisted his wrist awkwardly. The Onan’ji batted away the sword bare-handed, as a cat might toy with string. In the next instant, he struck Soh’shoro with the back of his hand, dashing the boy’s spine against rocks and sending his blade clattering aside.
Soh’shoro lay gasping on the stony banks, tasting blood. The sour iron flavor somehow reminded him of the Ang’soon princess’s rot. The monk stepped over him, holding the prince’s own ri’shou’an to his throat. He held the sword with strange affection, almost as if the weapon were a lover’s long-lost hand.
“Don’t kill me,” Soh’shoro begged.
“Kill you?” The Onan’ji smiled like a painted jackal. “I will never hurt you again . . . so long as you obey. Now get up.”
But Soh’shoro remained frozen on the ground.
“Get up! They’re coming for us.”
The prince remained paralyzed by fear. Yet, in that instant, mysterious kindness took the monk. With monolith-like insistence, he offered his hand.
“You must get up,” the Onan’ji persisted, gazing pleadingly into the prince’s eyes. “If you want to truly save this Valley. If you want to see your mother again. Please, you must get up.”
Everything balanced on that moment. But it was the Onan’ji’s honesty, worming and dangerous, that made Soh’shoro take his hand.
And so the prince’s childhood came to an end.
Chapter 4
Purpose
Soh’shoro and the assassin traveled for days, bridging the rivers on the western side of the Valley and then ascending through finely dusted snowfields toward the mountains beyond. The receding Mists above loomed cruel and angry as a storm. They spoke little—the rhythm of their paces replaced words, and silence became more potent than any conversation. Terror passed into endurance. Only the passage of the moon marked their journey: glinting out in the darkening sky just before rest or sliding away as it was time to rise.
They kept to secret paths, barely-used roads, and overland thoroughfares cutting brush and bracken. At night they camped in wild places, beside brooks hidden beneath boughs of tangled leaves. Though Soh’shoro found broken respite in sleep’s oblivion, the Onan’ji never seemed to rest. Indeed his gaze watched constantly, chaining the boy as surely as any bonds. The prince knew he could not run, so he lost himself to regret and disbelief and anger, ceaselessly trudging toward the mountains and their Mists.
“Before it begins,” the Onan’ji purred one morning, “I must show you what threatens the Valley—why I stole you.”
Their path led straight into the heart of a highland village. At first, Soh’shoro thought he might escape here by calling to its peasants for aid. But the thatched houses stood empty as kettles after a feast. The muddied roads grew thick with new weeds and untended bamboos. Everywhere clung the legacy of life interrupted: an axe tumbled beside unsplit wood, threads tangling on abandoned looms, drying lines bleached by countless suns.
“The Mists have been here, haven’t they?” Soh’shoro asked. These were some of his first words since the abduction.
“Correct.” The Onan’ji smiled. “They took this village during the Gi’en, when the Valley is weakest.” He stopped stock-still in the middle of the ghostly settlement, staring at the boy. “Have you seen a husk before?”
The boy shook his head.
“They are like Traders, Soh’shoro. But without any protection, the Mists eat their minds completely. Look here . . .”
He cracked open a door to a meager house. Inside, the light came thin and watery, like the radiance of stars through the Valley’s Mist-thick skies.
“I hear breathing,” Soh’shoro gasped.
“See the bodies.” The Onan’ji pointed to sparse litters. Across them spread a family—mother, father, and son—eyes wide and lips mouthing. But they remained catatonic otherwise. “They are gone, Soh’shoro. Their minds burned away by the Mists.”
Soh’shoro drew close to the child. The boy clutched a rotten doll, far baser than An-go’yi’ki’s gifted puppet. Soh’shoro still carried the present, smuggled in his robes. He rubbed its polish now, out of either comfort or sympathy he could not be sure.
“What is the boy looking at?” he gasped. “Is he hallucinating?”
“Remembering,” the Onan’ji purred. “The thoughts are not his own.”
Soh’shoro didn’t understand.
“He’ll recover, won’t he? With their next Rebirth the family will . . .”
“There is no Death in the Valley, Soh’shoro. But there is oblivion.” The monk’s lips kissed that last word lasciviously. “Priests will visit this village soon enough. They’ll bear the bodies back to the Trading District, entombing them beneath their bronze domes. Then these husks will simply exist. If they are lucky enough to find new flesh, their next life will be much the same. Our cycle cannot be broken. But our minds can be lost.”
The boy gasped.
“This is the danger to the Valley, Soh’shoro. The more the Emperor weakens, the more his control over the Mists fades. The more our world verges on oblivion.”
The boy’s sharp eyes narrowed. “You’re threatening me. Aren’t you?”
“Very clever.” The monk’s veinless lips shimmered like river foam in storm light. “The same will happen to you if you disobey. I won’t kill you.” Strange affection smeared his face. “I won’t need to. Do you understand?”
The Voice shivered to life at the danger. For a moment, the prince felt its cries match the mouthings of the husked child.
“I will run . . .” the boy stammered back.
“Then why haven’t you?” The monk laughed bitterly. “Our lessons have not even begun, Soh’shoro. And yet you learn.”
The pair returned to the ghostly streets. But the sight of the child’s pathetic doll, caked with mud and dust, chased the prince well into that evening’s slumber.
They reached the Qu’su temple four nights later, jutting from the Valley’s forested slopes. The sprawling complex rose partly atop outcroppings of rock, but mainly on tall, wooden pillars. Chanted prayers drifted down from their heights with the wind.
“The Qu’su dwell among the edges of the Valley, to better hear its whispers.” The monk pointed to the Mists, roiling just above the temple as though poised to smother it in intangibly beautiful, deadly whiteness. “This place will be your home, Soh’shoro. You are Qu’su now.”
The Onan’ji led the boy beneath the crimson arches of a winding stair, into the main compound. Here sprawled black briar shrines and sweeping terraces, rising in bleached pillars of banded oak. Smoked stone pathways conjoined the structures, ribbed by veils of draping moss. Chir pines clustered so tightly to these walks that only thin slices of moonlight slipped through. The air tasted sweet with altitude.
Dozens of monks tended the temples, praying before pyre smoke or polishing bronze tools. Their earthen robes blended into veinless hands, their patchwork markings not nearly as smooth or golden as the Onan’ji’s blemishing. A girl almost Soh’shoro’s age smiled; he flinched away in disgust.
The monk led Soh’shoro into the main temple’s gloom. Here the Onan’ji relaxed, sinking onto its reed matting. But Soh’shoro hesitated before the shrine’s threshold, recoiling from the timbered innards’ pungent scents of baked polish and boiled rice.
“We will speak now,” the Onan’ji promised, “about what you will become.”
The monk gestured to the mat before him. “Do you know what I am?”
“Qu’su,” the boy answered, unmoving. “A guardian of the Valley.”
“But why, Soh’shoro? Why does our Valley need protecting?”
“I don’t know.”
