by Ryan Kirk
Lei had no warning. The attack hit him, forcing him to bring a foot back to steady himself. The blow hadn’t been strong, but Lei hadn’t even sensed the power gathering. Lei stood there, belatedly realizing his mouth was hanging open.
Wu bowed again. “I have little strength, sir, but I can attack and defend without the signs.”
If it hadn’t just happened to him, Lei wouldn’t have believed. Scholars believed that the signs weren’t necessary, that they were crutches used by the monks to shape power to their wills. Lei had experimented himself, but for all the strength he could access, he couldn’t focus the power without the signs. Wu’s attack happened faster than Lei could react.
Lei’s imagination exploded with possibilities. “That’s an incredible gift.”
Wu flushed with pride, and Yang finished introducing the rest of the students. They were young, but if their gifts were as varied as Yang promised, they were harbingers of something far greater.
Yang called for a demonstration between his students. Wu faced off against Rong.
Within moments, Lei knew Yang had uncovered the future.
Rong darted around Wu, but Wu’s attacks were furious and unrelenting. No single blow did more than trip Rong up, but Wu was in full control of his gifts, and for all the speed Rong possessed, she struggled to break his defense.
His ability paled next to Rong’s, though. He could delay her, but he had no hope of stopping her. She delivered a series of blows that brought him down, though Lei saw she held back.
Regardless, the demonstration impressed him. Though Rong was far superior in a duel, Lei would gladly bring Wu into a tense situation, especially against a monk with only traditional training.
Lei heard the commotion before he saw it, a loud argument just beyond the walls of the training hall where two monks stood guard. After a minute, the sentry escorted in a face Lei hadn’t thought he’d ever see again.
It was Lord Xun’s chief questioner. An assassin, spy, and torturer all rolled into one.
From the surprise on the man’s face, he felt the same.
The sentry grimaced. “I’m sorry, Master, but he demanded entry. He claims he was sent straight from the emperor.”
Lei decided he had chosen a truly poor moment to leave his village.
7
Bai wondered if there would ever come a day when she possessed answers to all her questions.
The world shifted beneath her feet, deep currents threatening to pull her in directions she didn’t wish to go.
On the night of the Harvest Festival, while she waited for Hien to return, a massive explosion rocked the monastery in Windown. That evening Bai had been on a rooftop, taking in the festivities from a distance, avoiding any chance encounters with wandering monks. She had watched the flames lick the cloudless night sky, a dreadful certainty sinking deep into her bones.
War was coming.
For years tensions had grown between the monks, the military, and the people. The balance that had governed the empire for so long crumbled like a long-forgotten ruin, fading into decay.
No armies marched yet.
But they would.
Bai fought the currents. She didn’t approach the monastery to investigate. She remained hidden, refusing to provide the surviving monks a target for their anger.
At night she prowled the rooftops. Curiosity, and a healthy measure of self-preservation, drove her. The monks had been waiting for her. But how?
No one had known they were coming, and Bai was certain no one had followed them or sensed her power before the fight.
And now the monastery had been attacked. Bai feared suspicion would fall on her, though she hadn’t been involved. Who had attacked the monks?
Questions without answers.
Her first step remained the same: Question the monks who had run from the ambush. The trail of answers began with them.
As a child, she had grown up with fear, had lived with it like a close relative. She looked down at the bracelet on her wrist, her last reminder of her mother. As a young seamstress, she had feared so much: wealthy men, soldiers, illness. But all those fears amounted to nothing when she caught sight of those white robes in her small town. Almost every time she’d seen a monk, she turned the other way.
Until the day she didn’t, and her life had been forever altered.
No one should fear their protectors.
The explosion made her task more difficult. The surviving monks huddled within their broken walls, but it was days before she felt anyone gifted leave the monastery. Many people came and went in the interim, but no one aroused her interest.
Bai fought a mounting worry as well. Hien should have returned by now. She was only a day behind schedule, and any number of explanations existed, but Bai still fretted.
On the fourth night after the explosion, Bai finally caught a break.
She stood in the shadows upon a rooftop, watching the monastery from afar. Two monks left the monastery, casting furtive glances back and forth. She recognized them. They were the two she sought.
Bai followed.
She would have answers.
Bai leaped from rooftop to rooftop, the practice second nature to her now. The monks walked toward the outskirts of town.
She wished Hien were back. No doubt the woman would have half a dozen ideas for a clever ambush. Her mind skipped laterally across problems in ways Bai couldn’t follow.
Direct solutions appealed more to Bai. She wanted to question the monks. Her imagination only came back with one course of action. She moved faster, closing the distance between them.
They hadn’t made it far by the time she was above them. She dropped to the ground and sprinted the remaining dozen paces, pulling vast powers into her body as she did.
They sensed her then. They both spun around just as she launched herself at them. They had been traveling side by side, and as they turned, she slammed one palm against each monk’s forehead, sending them sprawling onto their backs.
Her momentum carried her past them, and she channeled strength into her legs to absorb the landing. She spun around, surprised to find one monk had maintained enough focus to sign an attack and hold it as she struck. The monk released his power. The attack slashed at her, but she absorbed it with ease. With the extra strength, she darted forward and plowed a fist into the monk as he stumbled to his feet. As he doubled over, she brought her knee to his face. He crumpled to the street.
A flash of steel glinted in the moonlight as the second monk regained his feet. For a terrifying moment, she thought the monk had imbued the dagger with energy. Her hand still hadn’t healed from the other night. She stumbled backward and out of the way, only to realize there was no energy attack. The monk used the dagger for its sharp edge alone.
The monk stabbed and swung, his movements untrained. No one had taught him how to fight with a blade.
Bai regained her balance and kicked at the monk. He backed up quickly, more than willing to give up ground to keep the dagger between them.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he signed an attack and launched it at her. She absorbed the energy without breaking stride. Desperate, he signed again, but this attack did no more damage to her than the first.
Bai matched the retreating monk step for step. She worried about the knife and was cautious about becoming overconfident. She wanted the monk to answer her questions, but she saw no hint of fear in his eyes. Only disgust.
And something else.
The monk knew something. Of that, she was certain.
“Why did you attack me?”
The monk snarled at her question. He leaped at her, launching another attack and swinging at her with the dagger.
She absorbed the energy and stepped into his swing, using his own momentum to throw him to the ground. With a quick movement, she broke his wrist, causing him to howl and drop the dagger.
Bai cursed. So far, the fight had been quiet. Screams wo
uld bring the overworked city watch.
She knelt over him and slapped him across the face, hard. He glared at her, the only recourse he had left. “Answer my question.”
He spat at her. Bloody saliva hit her face, momentarily distracting her. He rolled over and grabbed the dagger with his good hand, swiping at her neck.
Her disorientation only lasted a moment, not long enough for him to strike true. She was awash with power, her limbs moving quickly. She blocked the cut and swung a fist at his face.
Her fist connected and broke his nose. His head snapped to the side and his eyes went dull for a moment.
Bai yanked on his tunic, bringing his face to hers. “How did you know we were here?”
She had jarred something loose in his head. His eyes were unfocused, his words broken and slow. “We summoned you.”
The monk collapsed in her arms. His breathing was steady, but she wasn’t sure even smelling salts would bring him around soon.
She searched his body, looking for clues. Monks didn’t carry much, so she wasn’t surprised when she didn’t find anything that would lead her on, but she did notice a small tattoo on the underside of his forearm. She frowned as she bent closer to examine the symbol. It looked like a dagger stuck into the ground.
She wanted more light and more time, but the city watch gave her neither. She heard the sounds of men approaching and decided it was wisest to leave the scene. Filling her legs with power, she leaped onto the roofs just as the city guard came around the corner, discovering the unconscious monks. She could safely ignore them for the moment. Like everyone else, they’d never think to check above them.
Bai thought about the monk’s last statement. On the surface, it made little sense. How had the monks summoned her? They’d come here at the behest of the woman in the brothel.
Sudden thoughts tumbled through her head. They’d come here at a woman’s request.
What was to say that request had been honest?
What if it had all been a trap?
Bai’s mind spun with the possibilities.
Then stopped.
Hien.
She still hadn’t returned. If the monk had spoken true, it had all been set up.
The monks had captured Hien.
8
Every day, Delun imagined leaving the monastery. He stared longingly down the road that led to Two Bridges and the world beyond. He burned with thoughts of vengeance on the organizers of this attack.
Such dreams never took him even a single step beyond the gate, though. Revenge occupied nearly every waking thought, but duty held him in place.
A sense of duty to his brothers, both fallen and alive.
He refused to leave before they burned Taio’s body, pushing the final remnants of his soul onto whatever awaited him on the other side of the veil.
Three full days had passed since the attack. Three days of tending to the wounded, of preparing the bodies of the dead, of dreaming of the suffering he would deliver. Whenever his gaze fell on a fallen brother, coals burned in the pit of his stomach, their heat never quenched. But that heat sizzled within a deep void, an everlasting emptiness that soaked up his anger and left him feeling hollow.
The ceremony for the fallen brothers was scheduled for tonight. Tradition demanded obedience, now more than ever. Some small part of the soul, or animating energy, still existed within the dead men. Fire released that fragment onto whatever journey awaited it. The truth was as old as the monasteries themselves.
Delun worked in a small cellar underneath the main hall. The dead crowded the room, making it difficult to shuffle around. He dressed Taio for his final journey, hands and fingers moving without conscious thought. His mind traveled the roads of the past.
Taio had been present for almost all of Delun’s most important moments. He had welcomed Delun personally to the monastery over twenty-five years ago. The monastery had just reopened to students, the damage from the Order of the Serpent attack freshly repaired. Taio had been abbot for under a year, and they both felt like they had something to prove.
They had grown together. Delun became a feared warrior while Taio became one of the guiding lights among the abbots of the empire. Taio believed in the strength of the monasteries, but he still believed the monks were servants. His calm voice would be desperately missed in the weeks and months to come.
Delun pondered the circular nature of history. How hard would they have to fight to break the cycle of violence that trapped them? How often would his brothers have to die to prove their worth to this empire? Twice now the abbot of this monastery had been killed in an attack. Would another monk step forward as abbot, knowing the fate that had befallen his two predecessors?
Would they rebuild again, inviting another attack years from now? He couldn’t stomach the thought.
This cycle had to stop.
The other monks already whispered about what came next. Since the attack, decisions had been made by a nearly silent consensus. They cleared the shattered stone and piled it out of the way, ready to become material for new buildings. They gathered wood and built a large platform in the courtyard. Tonight they would douse the pyre in oil. The frames of the buildings the brothers had lived in would light their final journey.
After tonight were only questions. They needed a leader, but so soon after the attack, no one dared broach the subject and disrespect their lost abbot.
Delun wondered if he should volunteer. Unlike Taio, he had no desire for the position. He preferred being out in the world, not constrained by duties inside the walls of a monastery.
He also didn’t consider himself a leader. Brothers had looked up to Taio, but even after the attack, Delun hadn’t found welcome within these walls. Some glances even seemed accusatory, as though Delun had somehow failed them by allowing the attack to happen.
The glares cut deep, echoed by his own unspoken fears. If he hadn’t traveled home and then stayed for the Harvest Festival, would he have stumbled upon the plot and stopped it in time? Reason told him no, but the possibility kept him awake at night.
He finished dressing Taio, certainty settling over him. He would leave in the morning. This monastery was no longer home.
Delun stepped out of the cellar just in time to hear a shout from the walls.
Like most of the monks, Delun ran toward the hole in the wall where the gate had once stood. He felt several monks prepare shields and attacks, suspicion overwhelming hospitality. Since the explosion, they had received no visitors, no support from the town below. The silence of Two Bridges said nearly as much as the attack itself.
But the visitors were not from Two Bridges. Four white-robed figures climbed up the path. Delun felt something break inside of him, a tension he hadn’t even been aware of. He and the other monks weren’t alone.
Other brothers appeared to echo his sentiment. A few began to cry.
The visiting monks stopped over a dozen paces away from the walls. Delun could see the grief etched on their faces. He knew then that Two Bridges had not been the only target. Sorrow connected them all. The four monks bowed deeply, and then the visitors stepped into the monastery, welcomed with open arms.
The monk leading them spoke. “I’m sorry, brothers.” His voice shook with sorrow, his eyes on the verge of tears. “My name is Ping, and we have come to provide whatever aid we can.”
The four monks joined the survivors, introducing themselves and diving into the work. Ping approached Delun. At first, Delun wondered why, then realized he was presumably the oldest survivor. The thought hadn’t even occurred to him. He hoped Ping didn’t assume he was in charge.
The monk bowed deeply to Delun. “I am sorry for your losses. How may we help?”
Delun returned the bow. “Thank you. I’m Delun. It is good to see a friendly face. We will honor our dead tonight. Assistance with the preparations would be appreciated.”
At the mention of his name, Delun thought he noticed a slight shift in Ping’s demeanor. “You are Delun? The s
ame Delun who brought down the abbot of Kulat?”
Delun grimaced. “I am.”
Unlike so many brothers, Ping didn’t seem judgmental. He seemed more curious than anything else. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Perhaps, after the ceremony, we may speak again?”
Delun nodded.
The arrival of the other monks changed the attitude of the entire monastery. They didn’t bring joy, exactly, but there was a lightness to the monks’ actions that hadn’t been present before. Delun hadn’t realized how deeply the sense of isolation from the rest of the world was affecting them.
They prepared a feast, at least by monastic standards. For the first time in nights, conversation echoed in the halls that survived the attack. Delun didn’t hear any laughter, but healing had begun. For today, that would be enough.
As the sun fell, the monks gathered in the courtyard. For a minute, they all shuffled around, and Delun realized they hadn’t selected a monk to lead the ceremony. Traditionally, that responsibility was the abbot’s.
He stepped forward. He was the eldest, but more than that, he wanted to speak for Taio. He received a few unwelcome glares, but no one objected.
Delun led them through the chants, the ritual that marked the end of a monk’s life. As he did, he thought again of his long history with Taio. He glanced back at his master’s body, the action causing his breath to catch.
When the last chants of the ritual had faded, Delun spoke. “Taio was my master, but he was also a friend. He taught me honor, and his words guided my path through many challenging times. He was one of the best of us, and we will miss him.”
There was more he wanted to say, but he feared dishonoring Taio’s memory. Less was more, as Taio himself had often said.
Delun invited the others to come forward and speak, and one by one, the monks did, remembering their fallen brothers.
Every story was a thread, a life woven among so many others. Delun listened to stories of friendship, of rivalry, and of sacrifice. The thread of a monk’s life might be cut short, but their effect on the tapestry went on.