Darkening Skies

by eden Hudson

  “It is the Ro inside Yong Lei freezing, Student Raijin,” Palgwe said. “Changing Air can’t penetrate that deeply. Yong Lei must either survive or perish on his own now. The progression belongs to him alone.”

  “May I have special permission to stay with him until he finishes advancing?” Raijin asked.

  “I can only release you from your classes,” the training master said. “The grandmaster has full authority over your serving tasks.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  The rest of the day, Raijin stayed at Yong Lei’s side, only leaving twice—for the noontime tasks and again for the night tasks. The sun beat down on them from overhead and not a breath of a breeze blew through the courtyard, but cool air surrounded Yong Lei like a cloud, turning the moisture that entered there into hail. While Raijin soaked his uniform with sweat, his best friend shivered.

  Other students and masters came and went throughout the process, Grandmaster Feng included. When Master Chugi joined them, he released Raijin from his nightly reading.

  “Yong Lei never left your side when you advanced to Hail,” the old man said. “He deserves as much of the same in return as you can give him.”

  Fatty, the school cook, even showed up with a bowl of rice noodles for Raijin’s supper.

  “You got to eat, Raij,” Fatty said. “Going without won’t get Yong Lei to the other side any faster.”

  Though concern for his friend made the noodles feel like slugs in his mouth, Raijin accepted Fatty’s wisdom and forced himself to eat.

  The night seemed to last forever. Raijin meditated on and off, but couldn’t focus on cultivating his Ro while Yong Lei was still in danger. Though Raijin could remember the feeling of his own progression to Hail, he had never seen anyone else do it. From the outside, the process was extremely unsettling. Yong Lei’s shivering increased for long periods of time, sometimes growing so violent that he toppled over and flopped against the ground like a fish out of water. His teeth chattered, and once his skin turned to a deathly gray-blue for almost a full minute before it began to return to a normal color.

  Finally, just before Raijin would normally wake up and begin his morning serving tasks, the cold air surrounding Yong Lei dissolved into the summer heat, and the cloud of accumulated hail cycling and bouncing off him dropped to the ground and began to melt.

  Yong Lei slumped forward, asleep.

  Raijin leapt to his feet in excitement and relief. His best friend had made it. They were Hail brothers!

  “If the two of you keep this up, you may become the youngest masters of Darkening Skies since its founding.”

  Master Palgwe’s voice startled Raijin. He’d thought he was alone with Yong Lei in the dark courtyard. He turned to look at the training master.

  “I’m only here to check on you two,” Palgwe said. “Now that it’s clear you’ll both survive, I can return to my meditation.”

  “Master?” Raijin asked before Palgwe could leave. A question had been forming in his mind through the night. “Yong Lei was exhausted from helping me with serving tasks. I thought he was going to faint, but instead he advanced.”

  “Yes?” the training master said, his tone indicating that Raijin should continue.

  “And I advanced on the night I was caned for my negligence,” he said.

  Palgwe canted his head to the side. “What do you make of that, Student Raijin?”

  “Is physical exhaustion required before one’s Ro can reach the Hail stage?”

  “Not exhaustion. Consider the fifty-second principle.”

  “Adversity builds strength, but indulgence tears it down,” Raijin recited.

  The training master nodded. “We don’t know exactly what causes a person to advance from one level to the next. If we did, we could give each student a list and they could advance to master in as long as it took them to accomplish the tasks on it. But we do know that a certain level of maturity must be reached before the Ro advances, and it’s well known that hardship often breeds maturity.”

  Raijin looked down at his snoring friend as he digested this. When viewed in this way, his quick progression from Sleet to Hail made sense. Though he hadn’t often thought of his life as having hardships in it, nearly losing his friend had driven the point home.

  “Perhaps Yong Lei would have reached this point at such a young age on his own,” Master Palgwe said. “Or perhaps he learned this maturity by watching his friend go about his daily responsibilities without complaint. It’s not possible to say for sure.”

  On the ground, Yong Lei groaned and rubbed his eyes. Raijin rushed to help him up.

  “Am I still alive?” Yong Lei asked, eyeing the puddle of melting ice chips at his feet. “Did I advance?”

  “Yes on both accounts,” Raijin said, grinning. “Though I didn’t think you would do either.”

  Yong Lei laughed and thumped Raijin’s back. “You mean you hoped I wouldn’t because you knew that once I did, I’d you beat to Thunder in no time.”

  “Even the strangest things happen on occasion,” Raijin agreed.

  “Take Student Yong Lei to the physicians for his advancement pill, Student Raijin,” Master Palgwe said, striding back toward the school’s open door. “You should have just enough time to get there and back out to begin your chores.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  6 YEARS AGO

  That night, Raijin searched the library for one of Master Chugi’s favorite books, Medicines of the Northern Grasslands. He found the text unbearably boring, but Master Chugi had insisted Raijin pick their reading material for tonight, and he wanted to make up for having left the old man without a story the night before while Yong Lei was advancing.

  Yong Lei had finished incorporating the sunbright in time to assist Raijin with his nightly chores. With the added energy from the purged impurities and the refined Ro coursing through his system, the newly ranked Hail was a welcome help to Raijin carrying water, refilling wood boxes, and replenishing the woodpile.

  The reading, however, was a task only for Raijin. A small thanks for the master who had worked out a way to ensure that Raijin could study at the school and raised him from an infant. Master Chugi loved reading as much as he loved to meditate on the path. Going blind had been a terrible blow to the old man. When he was a child, Raijin had asked Master Chugi why he aged and Grandmaster Feng didn’t, but the elderly master could only shrug.

  “Grandmaster Feng has learned a trick I can’t,” he’d said.

  Bitterness shriveled Raijin’s heart on his master’s behalf. “But that’s not fair. You’re both on the same path.”

  “There come times while we walk the path when one rises and another falls,” Master Chugi had said contentedly. “This is life. You may as well say that the changing seasons or the height of a tree is unfair.”

  While he searched the shelves, his mind wandered, and he wondered whether there would come a time when Yong Lei learned a trick that he couldn’t. Would he envy his best friend or would he accept it as Master Chugi did? Raijin wasn’t sure he could be as understanding as his master.

  Finally, Raijin found Medicines of the Northern Grasslands. Someone had mis-shelved it beneath a stack of heavy carved panel books. Lucky for whoever had read it last that Raijin found it before Library Master Tang-Soo realized it was out of place.

  He took the stack of panel books down, intending to hold them only long enough to pick up Medicines, but an ivory inlay on the cover of the top panel caught his eye. It was a water lily. Raijin had never seen this book before.

  As much as Master Chugi loved Medicines of the Northern Grasslands, the old man would want to know what was in this new book more. Each wooden panel was much thicker than the usual parchment pages, but Raijin thought the novelty would more than make up for its brevity.

  Carefully, he returned the other panel books to the shelf, then put Medicines in its proper place. He worried that the library master would refuse to let him leave with such a new addition to the stacks, but the implac
able Tang-Soo didn’t bat an eye when he told her it was the one he wanted to borrow.

  Back in Master Chugi’s quarters, Raijin guided the blind old man’s hand to the front panel so he could feel the ivory inlay.

  Master Chugi nodded gravely. “So soon, so much sooner than I hoped. But isn’t it always?” Raijin opened his mouth to speak, but Master Chugi waved him off. “No, no questions now. Later. Please begin, my boy.”

  Obediently, Raijin opened to the first written panel. The text was Deep Root, the Oldest Language and the common ancestor of all modern languages. Each character had been gouged so deeply into the wood that the lantern cast them in pools of shadow.

  “Among the ancient paths, there exists one which threatens to undo all. The Path of the Water Lily.” Raijin ran his fingertips over the words as he read, the silken smoothness of the panel attesting to the book’s age. “Hidden so frequently behind the fairest of faces, this poisoned bloom sits in direct opposition to the Path of Darkening Skies. One destroying what the other would save, tainting what the other would cleanse. The Water Lily cannot be defeated by clouds and rain or any of the other ancient ways. A day comes when its toxic touch will wither the Paths of the Falling Leaf, Endless Day, Hidden Whispers, and Darkening Skies, and wipe from the earth every other path the ancestors left us. War will rage on the end of the Water Lily master’s puppet strings, feeding life energy to the deadly bloom, strengthening it with every sip.”

  Tonight, there was none of the usual dozing or snoring while Raijin read. The old man sat rapt, his frail bird’s chest rising and falling with each breath.

  “That character is interchangeable with Ro,” Master Chugi said, though he spoke quietly, almost as if thinking aloud. “The shape of the character is where we get the modern word. Over the years it evolved into the letters we use for Ro.”

  Looking at it, Raijin could see how the intricate lines of “life energy” had grown together and simplified to become the stylized “Ro” of New Script.

  He returned to reading. “Deliverance may never come. The world may well expire in the poisoned grasp of the Water Lily. Not even the combined wisdom of the ancestors can save us. Whatever hope there might have been lies at the end of a broken path, the cost greater than any man or woman could ever pay.”

  Raijin closed the bleak text and stared down at the beautiful inlay in the front panel. Master Chugi didn’t speak a word, but the pattern of his breathing and the fidgeting of his gnarled hands told Raijin the old man was still awake.

  Finally, Raijin could take the silence no more. “Is it... Is it a prophecy?”

  Master Chugi shook his bald head.

  “Much surer than that,” the old master said sadly. “The detail, the names. None are open-ended placeholders. This is certain. It will happen.”

  “Why wouldn’t all the paths join forces to destroy the Water Lilies?” Raijin asked. “This book has been worn smooth with age. They’ve had decades—maybe longer—to eradicate the Water Lilies.”

  “Ask any inji,” Master Chugi said. “You cannot defeat that which you cannot find.”

  “Then why do any of the paths still exist? Why bother following them if they’ll just be destroyed and nothing can save them?”

  “I cannot speak for any path but my own.” Master Chugi straightened up on his bed mat. “The Path of Darkening Skies, however, remains as a gateway for the chosen one. Without it, the Thunderbird will never come.”

  Raijin’s brows furrowed. “Are Water Lilies the Dark Dragon that the Thunderbird is destined to defeat?”

  “In truth, my boy, I don’t know. But I have always hoped the two were one and the same.”

  “It has to be done,” Raijin said, making up his mind. “They have to be stopped, no matter what an old book says.” He looked up at the old man. “Whatever price is necessary, I can pay it.”

  A tear slipped down Master Chugi’s deeply lined cheek. He wiped it away with one gnarled hand.

  “Your time here is at an end,” he said in a thick voice.

  “What?” Raijin shook his head, though the blind master couldn’t see him. “That’s not right. I’m just a Hail. I’m nowhere near mastering Darkening Skies.”

  The old man took Raijin’s hand in both of his and squeezed. “This is your last night at the school. You must leave.”

  Shock and confusion turned to anger in Raijin’s chest. “But I’ve done everything required of me. From the day my serving tasks began until now, I’ve never shirked my duties.” Then a thought occurred to him. “If Yong Lei isn’t supposed to help me, I’ll have him stop. I promise. I can do them alone easily.”

  “You can’t continue to walk the Path of Darkening Skies,” Master Chugi said, his voice hard as burled steel. “Those on it must never absorb Ro taken from another in violence after their first purge of impurities.”

  “But, Master, I haven’t—”

  “Listen to me!” Master Chugi shouted, dragging Raijin closer with surprising strength. “Are you the chosen one or not, Raijin? Because this night is the night that decides. If you can’t take the burden upon your shoulders, tell me now. The entire world depends upon it.”

  Raijin’s brain stuttered and fought to catch up.

  “I can shoulder whatever burden has to be shouldered,” he said. “Whatever needs to be done, I’ll do it.”

  “That is good,” Master Chugi said, his grasp on Raijin’s hand easing a degree. “Because what needs to be done is something no one in this school can do. It’s so much. So very much. The Path of Darkening Skies has prepared the way for the chosen one, but the path he makes from now on will have to be his own.”

  “What about Yong Lei?” Raijin asked. “He’s advanced at almost the exact same pace as I have. What about all the students with moon-marks who might be the Thunderbird? How do you know they aren’t the ones you should be speaking to instead of me?”

  “Can they carry the weight you can, Raijin? Can they serve the world or can they barely serve themselves?”

  Raijin faltered. He knew the truth, had seen it several times since his best friend began helping him with his daily tasks.

  At his silence, Master Chugi’s face softened, the wrinkles going slack. “You’ve taught Yong Lei well by your example, but he will never be able to shoulder the burden you will be called to.” The old man gave a phlegmy sniff. “My boy, you think I’m bestowing some great honor upon you, but in truth, I’m doing quite the opposite. The chosen one must suffer and die horribly to save this world. His end will draw out until he himself questions whether it was worth the pain, and when all is said and done, he may have defeated the Dark Dragon only to find that it was never the Path of the Water Lily at all, and the threat to all other ancient paths still remains. If I could place the burden on any other student in this school, I would do it. You are like a son to me, Raijin, and I would protect you with my very soul if I could. But there is no one else.”

  Raijin inhaled deeply, then released the breath, steeling himself.

  “Tell me what I have to do, Master.”

  Multiple tears now tracked down the old man’s wrinkled cheeks. He patted Raijin’s face with one gnarled hand.

  “You have to go down to the foot of the mountains, into Kokuji, the village where you were born, and find your mother. Leave immediately. Pack nothing. Tell no one.” Master Chugi pressed a small stone into Raijin’s hand, its surface a swirl of blue and gold. “Swallow this. It will protect you against malicious attack for one full day.”

  Raijin stood, his mind reeling. “How will I find her? My mother.”

  “She works in a teahouse, I’ve told you that, haven’t I?” Master Chugi nodded. “Of course I have. Her name is Lanfen.” He gave Raijin a soft shove toward the door. “Go now. Remember to take the pill. The forest is full of guai, and I need to know that my student-son is protected.”

  “Yes, Master,” Raijin said, his throat suddenly constricting at the thought of leaving behind the man who had been like a father to h
im all his life.

  Though Master Chugi couldn’t see him, Raijin pressed his face to the cold stone floor three times, then backed away, still scraping his face along the floor. The old man deserved more than that, but it was all Raijin had to give. Respect and obedience.

  Chapter Twenty

  PRESENT

  “Where is my sister?” Shingti’s demand thundered through the walls, carrying easily to the inner chamber as Koida climbed out of the bath.

  In the outer chamber, Batsai’s reply was a low grumble, but before he finished speaking, Shingti slammed open the door.

  “Koida?”

  “In the screen,” Koida replied. She took a linen from her attending lady and wrapped her wet hair up, then reached for another and began drying herself.

  The nightcaller floor screamed beneath Shingti’s angry tread as she crossed the floor between the bed and the bathing screen.

  “Are you well, little sister? Do you feel all right?”

  “I feel better than I have in...” Koida set the linens aside and stepped into the silk robe the lady was holding out. “Well, I can’t remember ever feeling this well. Energized. That pill did something to my Ro. Maybe I advanced.”

  Shingti didn’t look convinced. “You would know if you had advanced.”

  “How?” Koida asked as she tied her sash. “I’ve never seen it done, and I don’t know what it feels like.”

  “You would just know. It’s not easy to mistake.”

  Koida walked out from behind the screen and to her bed, where the elaborate dress for the second wedding feast had been laid out. Rather than begin the arduous task of dressing, she went to her wardrobe and found a clean set of training clothes.

  “In any case, I want to see if I can manifest a bladed weapon now,” she said.

  “So try,” Shingti said, gesturing with one hand.

  “Not here.” Koida realized it was faulty reasoning, but she felt like she had a better chance of success in the training courtyard where she’d seen Shingti and so many others manifest blades. “I’ll do it outside.”