Eternitys blade, p.15
Eternity's Blade, page 15
The Voice is useless against him, Soh’shoro realized at last. For the monk had truly mastered the arts of the Qu’su. He could anticipate its very cries. He can’t hear it speak to me. But he predicts its warnings nonetheless.
There was no space between the attacks. In the next instant, the Onan’ji flipped Soh’shoro’s ancestral blade and hurled it like a spear, chasing headlong after it. Unable to roll away, in desperation Soh’shoro at last ignored the Voice, throwing his forearm up instead to block the cutting edge of the sword. The ri’shou’an sliced through his arm, dividing the flesh like a stone sinking into water. But somehow Soh’shoro knocked the weapon away. And in the last instant he snatched its hilt, catching the ri’shou’an reversed and slashing out defensively.
The Onan’ji had not anticipated this swiftness. He stumbled for a second, caught by the very tip of Soh’shoro’s sword. A thin stream of blood sprayed. The prince saw his chance. Through the pain he lunged, lancing the sword with both hands to support his shattered wrist. But the Qu’su had already mastered himself, his motions blurring too fluid and erratic for Soh’shoro to follow. A backstep from the Onan’ji became a dash, and suddenly he rolled toward Obajen-mahoe’s fetid corpse. Now the monk snatched up his own fallen ri’shou’an, spiraling back toward Soh’shoro in a wild skein of flaying blades.
Through reflex alone he parried, a single crisp note resounding in the candlelight. In the same motion the Onan’ji locked their swords, surging like a flood, twisting both guards wide. Soh’shoro stepped back just in time, as the Onan’ji’s cut scratched a razor’s line against his neck.
He stumbled into the wall, snapping a calligraphy brush in two and spilling ink across the reed matting. With no ground to give now, the Onan’ji was inside his guard in moments, lunging. For one terrible instant their blades clashed, spitting sparks into the dimness of the candlelight, knife-edge metal shrieking into the silence. But expertly the Onan’ji leaned into the block, overextending Soh’shoro’s elbow, then driving palm backward into bone. Soh’shoro’s arm snapped like a pine bough beneath winter snow.
In the next instant the Qu’su drove his ri’shou’an through Soh’shoro’s chest. The weapon slicked past collarbone and sinew, burying itself up to the hilt in flesh. The force threw Soh’shoro off his feet, cracking his body against the weakened wall. Warmth unfurled inside him like a blossoming lily. And as the Onan’ji surged his full weight forward, Soh’shoro burst through the chamber and onto the rain-soaked eaves outside.
The fireworks echoed brilliantly against the hastening dark. Even with the downpour they still exploded, amethyst and ruby, emerald and lazuli, against the uncountable stars gleaming behind Mist and storm. It was like the whole night sky of the Valley had come alive with a thousand new possibilities, frantic and fantastic, more radiant and stunning than any earthly luminosity. Beneath their rolling thunder, the wash of the City, still glowing and majestic, heedlessly watched the heavens for its joy.
And Soh’shoro smashed onto the ceramic eaves, skidding against the roof’s edge. He vomited blood, coughing again and again as a bright heat filled his lungs. His vision swam between reality and emptiness, as if the Mists closed about him. When his eyes focused through the pain, he saw the cracked mask of his princess beneath him, its lacquer now crimson with blood washing clean in the rain.
“Get up.”
The Onan’ji came slowly through the broken wall, like a spider on the strands of its web. Instinct made Soh’shoro try to move, but his wounds were too deep and only shivers greeted his efforts at motion.
“Get up,” the Onan’ji repeated. He advanced, calmly and leisurely, flicking his blade like a cat’s tail.
Soh’shoro breathed through the pain. Slowly, his hand reached down for the mask. But all he managed was to dash more blood against the hardness of its lacquer.
“I’m sorry,” he slurred.
“Get up,” the Onan’ji repeated one last time. “I will not kill my apprentice without paying him his final lesson.”
Soh’shoro heard the Voice again, through the fireworks, like a prisoner crying through walls of stone. It was as if the whole of the Valley shouted with its terror. And Soh’shoro rose one final time, using his ri’shou’an as a crutch.
“Let’s end it.” Blood dribbled from his mouth with the words.
“You don’t understand,” the Onan’ji marveled. “There is no end, Soh’shoro. Not here. Not in the Valley.” Sorrow crept into the corners of the Qu’su’s mouth and eyes. “That is the price; the secret prison of Eternity. For Death is a kind of escape, Soh’shoro, from our memories, from our desires and our regrets. Death alone absolves us of our past. And there is no Death here.”
“What is this madness?” Soh’shoro choked out.
The Onan’ji raised his blade in answer.
The pair circled. Tiles threatened to shear loose in the storm, and with each step they fought for balance. Soh’shoro feigned tripping, baiting the Onan’ji to lunge, then whipped his blade from behind him in a cunning trap. But pain and injury slowed his slash. Effortlessly, the Onan’ji slid underneath the cut.
Both blades snapped back, striking dull sparks into the hush of the rain. Soh’shoro’s splintered bones slid against sinew, his muscles giving out. Unable to parry, he lost ground before the Qu’su’s slash, feet slipping precariously at the roof’s edge. Foolishly and reflexively, he let the Voice steady his balance. And Soh’shoro threw himself beneath the Onan’ji’s next strike, cross-stepping into a final slash.
But the Onan’ji was waiting. Expertly the monk’s palm slapped the flat of the prince’s blade, guiding it harmlessly away. With Soh’shoro’s side completely exposed, the Qu’su’s ri’shou’an tore through his torso, spilling blood into the festival rains. For an instant, Soh’shoro felt only washing heat, bursting like steam from an overheated kettle. Then he collapsed onto the roof, beside the mask of his bride.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped again, his fingers scratching anemically against the lacquer wood.
The Onan’ji looked on in disgust.
“Do you understand? What the Qu’en always knew? That time’s truth is what I must teach?” The Onan’ji then bent beside the dying prince. “We can live forever, Soh’shoro, but we are never free from ourselves. True Eternity is tainted with regret. Because true Eternity must not be endured alone. All I do is seek to change that. For myself. And for you.”
With all his strength, Soh’shoro looked into the eyes of his former master. The Onan’ji’s veinless orbs glared back, burning with hideous sadness.
And Soh’shoro smiled, because he noticed the deep gash running down the Qu’su’s face, streaming milky blood from a clouding eye. One of his cuts had severed cleanly through the Onan’ji’s orb. The Qu’su was half blind.
“Almost,” Soh’shoro choked.
“I know. I told you that you were magnificent.”
Gently, the Onan’ji closed his hand over Soh’shoro’s face, raising him high over the edge of the Palace eaves. Nobles and onlookers shouted through the fireworks now, gesturing up from the courtyard at their duel’s climactic end.
“A clean cut, I think, is easiest for the priests to stitch,” the Onan’ji snarled. “And when they find your body here, they will know it as the traitor who murdered the Houses. It will be the Qu’su who protected the Valley from your madness. And then I will be all that is left in this world to trust. Soon, Soh’shoro. Soon I will taste the purest lily of all.”
More voices, more shouts, but the prince’s dying mind blurred all sound together. Then one last time the Onan’ji pulled his disciple close, speaking for only him to hear.
“We’ll meet again soon,” he whispered reverently.
With one clean stroke the monk slit Soh’shoro’s throat. The prince felt those final moments almost forever, suspended in free fall, choking blood, staring back into the monk’s single, sorrowful eye. Then Soh’shoro’s corpse thudded wetly against the eaves, completely still.
Above, the fireworks continued, furious and beautiful, blotting out the stars.
Part Three
The Ocean of the Cloud
Chapter 13
Awakening
“Dry the hollow,” someone said. “The powder has to take.”
“Wet or not, it will work,” another voice replied. “The old ones always do.”
“Not in rain,” warned the first. “Even Old-Make struggles to spark in rain.”
Soh’shoro felt droplets against his face, body numb except for the dull cold of the storm.
“Water,” he choked at last. “I need water.”
There was shuffling near him. Then the feeling of a figure close. A bowl pressed against his lips, and a thin trickle ran past the taste of iron and lilies that clotted his mouth. In the back of Soh’shoro’s throat, blood clots flaked away, exposing angry rawness beneath.
“He’s waking,” the first voice called. “I may need extra hands.” Then drawing close, speaking only to him now: “Not too much. It will start to hurt soon.”
As if on cue, Soh’shoro started coughing. It was like wet snow pressed into his lungs, leaking out a slow, teasing ache. Hands worked steadily in answer, unwinding lily cloth from around his neck and chest to let muscles stretch. His eyes rolled open, straining to focus, but only pale washes of color answered.
“I know your voice,” he forced out. But mucus loosened, and he vomited. The rich taste of dried blood gummed his senses.
“Easy,” soothed the familiar voice, rolling him sideways. “Waking is always painful, and you did not die peacefully.” He felt the speaker’s hands tremor slightly as they wiped his lips. “I died the same way.”
“What do you mean?” Panic crept at the edges of his mind. But he spoke too quickly, and another coughing fit seized him.
From a distance another voice called back:
“We don’t have much time.”
“We can’t move him now,” the familiar voice replied.
“Just get him up, Yei’an.”
He knew the name. And with it he smelled winter bur and honey.
“Is it you, Yei’an?” He asked the question slowly, making each syllable clear. “From the temple?”
“Yes.”
And suddenly everything came back: the Valley; his House; his betrayals. And the Onan’ji’s blade, snicking through his throat.
Soh’shoro jerked away from the remembered cut, but his weakened muscles only spasmed in response. In moments he twisted himself against his funeral bindings, starting to choke.
“Be still!” Yei’an shouted.
Still Soh’shoro fought his bandages. He could feel the ri’shou’an slicing through his neck, all thought overcome by a primal need to escape its inevitable cold. But tangled by bindings, he merely thrashed until his chest heaved mightily for air.
“He’ll kill me!” he forced out, voice like shale loosening. “He’ll kill me!”
With a final surge of strength his hand broke free, tearing bandages as it groped for the flesh of his neck. But the Onan’ji’s blade was gone, replaced by the roughness of epoxy and fresh, angry scar tissue.
“Easy. It happened. But it’s over now.”
And Soh’shoro gasped disbelief into the muddy damp.
Yei’an worked with the confidence of routine. After freeing the last of his funeral wraps, letting ice-sharp air kiss his skin, she massaged his arms and thighs, forcing thickness from flesh and blood to move once more. Soh’shoro’s eyes focused at last, adjusting to the twilight of the rainstorm.
Framed by a black willow cloak pulled tight against the downpour, Yei’an’s bronze face loomed above him like a mouse peeking from its hollow. Her soft nose and full cheeks, her wide eyes and thin mouth; she was all the same monk Soh’shoro had loved and killed in the Qu’su temple, another life ago.
“I’m sorry.”
“We all panic when waking,” replied Yei’an, misunderstanding. “But there is danger, Soh’shoro. We need to run.”
He dug his hands into the tar beside his funeral bower, struggling upright. “Why? Where are we?”
But he already knew. Somehow Soh’shoro felt it with a certainty beyond anything before:
Outside.
“In a mountain pass,” Yei’an whispered reverently. “Beyond the Valley. Beyond the Mists.”
Soh’shoro craned his head, looking up now at their cloying veils, cinereal and hungry. They churned crueler than they had in the Valley, gray and perilous, blotting the snowy slopes above.
“I need to go back,” Soh’shoro declared. “I have to stop the Onan’ji.”
“How, prince?” Yei’an asked. “We passed through the Mists with Death, but that is a one-way journey. There is no return. Trust me, others have tried.” Soh’shoro recalled the charred courtier before the Emperor’s Corpse. “We have only Outside now. Look.”
Yei’an pointed down the mountain. And for the first time, Soh’shoro stared across his new world:
Past the rocky descent, great sweeps of amaranthine sand ran almost as far as the eye could see. Yellow-leafed glades and pale, opalescent rivers pocked these dunes to verdant life. Occasionally fires illuminated shadowy walls, sparking ginger and violet in the rain. Villages, Soh’shoro realized. People live Outside. And judging from the frequency of the lights, far more than in the Valley.
The largest settlement lay beyond the sands, atop what Soh’shoro thought must be a great pond. But those dark waters stretched forever, vanishing into the horizon. Great silver waves sparkled across its surface like earthly stars. From my mother’s memories.
“That city is called the Haven,” Yei’an explained. “And the waters beyond it are the Ocean. Stunning, isn’t it? I remember my first time seeing all this too.” She smiled. “And look further! Look up!”
And he did. But no Mists darkened the skies over Outside. Instead, no matter where Soh’shoro stared, naked heavens unfurled miraculously free, virginal and burning with the ruddy cut of the tempestuous dawn. The most brilliant clouds swam through that ether, storm cast and slate cored overhead, silvered and honey bright in the distance, tangling into countless mutable, morphing shapes. Their billowing majesty stretched to the limitless horizon, converging with the waves into a single kiss of rainbowed brilliance.
“It’s beautiful,” Soh’shoro gasped.
“And dangerous,” Yei’an replied, suddenly darkening. “Outside is not like the Valley, Soh’shoro. Violence comes from here.”
Her eyes darted past Soh’shoro’s funeral bower, to the edges of its trail. Bloody corpses lay haphazardly scattered beside it, azure tattoos glistening in the stilling rain.
“Those are Traders. They died . . . ?” Soh’shoro asked in confusion. “How?”
“My men defeated them. Both the Traders and the Cultists escorting them.” She swallowed. “Everyone can kill here. Death belongs Outside.”
Soh’shoro’s eyes swept farther down the trail. The men who had shouted at Yei’an massed there, all wearing the same onyx cloaks. But unlike the monk, their skin matched the tarry earth: a rich, dark tone like ghost rice seared for festival cakes. Scars and small cuts storied their cheeks and hands. One had lost an arm; another’s face was swathed by bandages. And still Soh’shoro saw subtler marks of violence, in the way the Outsiders’ guilty eyes mirrored his own.
They are like me, Soh’shoro realized, as if waking from a dream. The Outsiders share my stain. And he felt terrible revulsion at his own abhorrence cast over an entire world.
“We have to get him up!” one of the men snapped. “The Cult of the Lily-Eaters just crossed the lower ridge. They’ll flank us if we don’t move now.”
Farther down the mountain, dozens of ill-defined shapes picked their way unsteadily up the slope. Each wore saffron robes, recalling a poorly spun imitation of courtiers’ cloth. Most carried strange pouches overstuffed with flowers. At first Soh’shoro doubted the contents. But even at this distance, the pale, acerbic white of lily petals could not be mistaken.
“By the Black!” Yei’an snapped, now shouting to her men. “We’ll take them as they climb. Form firing lines!”
She helped Soh’shoro limp to cover, into the shadows of a rocky ridge. A heavy rod, wrapped in cloth and slung across her back, kept jarring his side as they walked.
“Where did you get this?” he asked, struggling to remember the Old Word. He had seen this tool before. It was identical to the foreign weapon brought into the Mausoleum, beside the burned courtier. “This is for War.”
“This is War,” Yei’an stressed, laying Soh’shoro on the bare stones. “And you’re a part of it.”
Deftly she uncovered the device’s metal length. Then she pulled a paper roll free from a pouch by her waist, biting it open and rolling its small metal ball into the hollow at the tool’s end. A dark powder remained in the packaging, which she tapped carefully into the rod’s dented pan, taking great pains to shield it from the rain.
“Black Cloaks, rifles ready!” she commanded. Then, to Soh’shoro: “Wait here.”
Yei’an strode toward her men, as each aimed their weapon. Billowing in the rain, their willow cloaks looked like the sails of rare boats plying the Valley’s ponds for lilies.
“Hold!” Yei’an shouted. “Hold your fire!” Then—“Powder free!”
Suddenly the rifles exploded with smoke and noise, like nothing Soh’shoro had ever experienced before. The cliff face echoed thunderously, rocks sheared loose, and the battalion vanished beneath plumes of white smog. Dust blossomed in a wide pan across the lower ridge. The saffron shapes jerked backward in clouds of red mist, their distorted screams blending with the fading cannonade.
“Those weapons . . .” Soh’shoro gasped. Accurate as throwing needles. Deadlier than swords.
“Cover!” Yei’an shouted. “Take cover . . . !”
