Darkening Skies

by eden Hudson

  The ground shifted beneath Raijin’s feet as the trees’ roots strained against the ray’s pounding. He stumbled back against a cutleaf bush, so startled that he hardly noticed the waxy leaves slicing into his arms and back through his school clothes. Not only a demon beast, but one that could speak. Through his panic, his mind spit out a fact he’d read in the Tiered Demons scroll: to have developed that ability, this guai-ray must be a hundred years old at least. Rarely did demon beasts live to fifty years before hunters or battles for territory killed them.

  “Apologies!” Raijin’s voice cracked with fear. “Ten thousand apologies, honored ruler of the forest, but I have never seen your mate or nest!”

  The thrashing stopped.

  “The legged thing is lying,” the ray growled, wings rippling. “Its partner will sneak up behind Zhuan now and kill her with their armies of poisoned wasps.”

  “Your servant has no wasps, great and honored mountain ray,” Raijin said. He turned out his pockets, then untied his uniform jacket and opened it to show nothing but his lean chest and stomach. “No traveling partner, either. In fact, your servant is realizing more every moment just how alone he is.”

  “Prove yourself,” Zhuan the guai-ray demanded, pressing in against the trees and brambles. Her snout poked between two of the widest spaced trunks. “Put out your hand and let me sense your body’s electrical signature.”

  “Will the honored guai give an oath to assure her servant’s survival?”

  “If you are neither of the legged creatures I have been tracking, then no harm will come to you,” she said, pressing closer. The birches at her shoulders groaned.

  “Apologies, honored ruler—” Raijin bowed over his fists once more to offset any perceived rudeness of his insistence. “—but that is no oath.”

  Zhuan snapped her wings down hard, indignant. “My every word is an oath older than your people, legged thing. I will not dilute my speech with many words for your comfort. Put out your hand.”

  Raijin couldn’t see that he had any other choice. He’d done nothing to this beast or any other. That alone should exonerate him.

  However, his hand still shook as he stretched it toward her snout. She raised her body at a slight angle. On either side of her flat, crushing mouth plates, Raijin could see a set of branching ridges running beneath her skin. He flinched but forced himself to keep his hand extended. Blue lights like tiny fireflies ran along the branching ridges, spreading out to follow his fingers.

  With a low growl, Zhuan backed away from the thicket.

  “You spoke the truth, legged thing. Zhuan will not harm you.”

  Though he’d known all along that he was innocent, Raijin slumped as the tension in his neck and shoulders disappeared. He bowed again, his entire body loose and jittery.

  “Thank you, honored—”

  The demon ray interrupted, uninterested in his courtesy. “Have you seen two-legged creatures like yourself with poisoned wasps? Their electrical signatures are male. I tracked them from the destroyed nest in my cave. They were moving this way.”

  “Poisoned wasps?” Raijin asked, retying his sash over his jacket. “Humans—legged creatures like me—cannot command wasps.”

  Zhuan turned an imperious circle in the air.

  “Their stingers protruded from what was left of my mate’s thick hide,” she said. “They could not bury themselves as completely in him as they did in my cubs’ tender flesh, but their poison worked just as effectively. The stingers were long and thin. Silver. Numerous.”

  An image of a needle blowgun appeared in Raijin’s mind. He’d seen such a thing illustrated and described as the weapon of choice for many fictional villains in the wandering warrior stories he and Master Chugi enjoyed.

  “Were the stingers metal?” he asked.

  Her snout dipped. “Their signature was iron with a small amount of carbon.”

  “These sound like the poisoned needles evildoers shoot from a blowgun over a distance when they cannot best an opponent in a close-up fight. It is a cowardly weapon.”

  “It must be so,” Zhuan agreed. “If my mate had sensed these vile legged things stalking our nest, they could never have killed him. He was mighty.”

  “Your servant—”

  “Stop that nonsense talk that hides your self behind words!” The demon beast fluttered her wings with frustration. “Speak out in the open or not at all.”

  Raijin took a moment to compose himself. If anyone had ever asked him when might be an ideal time to speak in the highest tones of formal respect, he would have said when face-to-face with a force of nature like this guai-ray. Obviously demon beasts had different ideas about manners. He still couldn’t bring himself to speak familiarly to her. He settled instead on the respectful address of an honored relative, a tone somewhere between familiar and formal.

  “I am sorry, Zhuan, so sorry for what these legged creatures have done to your family.”

  Another flap of indignation. “You cannot apologize for what you had no part in, and there is no time to mourn for what has not been avenged. Will you bring death upon them with me, legged one?”

  Something moved at the edge of the demon ray’s silvery glow, but it was gone before Raijin’s eyes could focus on it.

  “Apologies, but I can’t,” he said, returning his gaze to the guai-ray. “To bring violence on another is against the teachings of my master unless it is to save a weaker creature from death.”

  “Aha. This is why you did not fight me,” she said, her tail ticking back and forth as if reenacting the attack. “Because there is nothing weaker than a legged creature in my forest.”

  The memory of that mind-blanking fear prickled at Raijin’s heart, even now trying to send panic racing through his veins. He hadn’t even been able to remember his own name in that moment; there was no way he would have been able to remember the central code of his path.

  “My master says that, in danger, one does not rise to the level of his hopes, but falls to the level of his training,” he said, hoping she would accept this as agreement. Then he remembered the Breath of the Underwater Panther pill Master Chugi had given him. He reached into his pocket and pulled it out. “But I can give you this. It will protect you from their poisoned needles and any other malicious harm someone might try to do to you for one full day.”

  He came out of the thicket, trusting the demon beast would stick to her word not to harm him, and offered the blue-and-gold pill to her. Zhuan descended on his palm, pressing her flat underside to his hand and crushing the pill between her jaw palates without damaging his flesh.

  A ripple ran through the guai-ray from snout to barbed stinger.

  “Thank you for the gift,” she rumbled. “In return, no harm will come to you from demons or natural beasts while you move through my territory.”

  “Thank you, Zhuan.” He bowed to her, this time deep enough to expose the back of his neck and make himself vulnerable. He wanted to show the guai-ray that she had his full trust.

  “I would know what you are called, legged one.”

  “Ji Yu Raijin.”

  “The thunderer who stops the rain,” she mused, interpreting the ancient meanings of his names. “I cannot see how this will come to pass on your current path, but I could not see legged ones killing my mate while I was hunting, either. Go in peace, Ji Yu Raijin.”

  Without waiting for his response, Zhuan the demon guai-ray swam off into the darkness. Once more, something flickered at the edge of Raijin’s vision, but when he turned the thing was gone.

  Deciding to take the hundred-year beast at her promise that he would not be harmed by animal or demon, Raijin turned back down the mountain and returned to his walk.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  6 YEARS AGO

  Dawn painted the sky in grays, blues, and purples as Raijin walked out of the Shangyang Mountains’ treacherous forest unharmed the next morning. His mad run the night before had brought him farther down the slope than he’d estimated. As
the sky lightened, he could see a cloud of salty mist rolling in from the ocean. One by one, squares of yellow light appeared below. Fire shining through the windows of Kokuji’s houses. Servants going about their morning work.

  Raijin’s stomach sank. His serving tasks were now officially undone for the day. He was no longer allowed to train with the school. The only home he’d ever known was closed to him. There was no turning back now.

  With no other options available, Raijin continued down toward the yellow fires.

  Until it grew light enough and he drew close enough to see each individual building in the coastal village and every tiny boat pulled up on its beach, Raijin didn’t realize how nervous he was. He had been focusing all night on leaving behind his school and best friends, on stepping off the Path of Darkening Skies and what he would do next. Focusing so hard that he’d hidden from himself the anxiety of finally meeting the woman who had given him up.

  What if she looked at him and said she wished he hadn’t come? What if she told him to get away, leave her alone, that she hadn’t wanted him then and she didn’t want him now?

  For some reason, this frightened him on a more primal level than the rampaging guai-ray had. Every step grew harder to take, as if he were walking uphill rather than down.

  It occurred to him that he could sit down and spend some time meditating. He usually did that in the morning while he waited for the water buckets to fill, and his Ro could always use the exercise.

  But he knew that was only the seized-upon excuse of a frightened mind. If he stopped now, he would never complete the climb down to the village. Master Chugi had told him that he must find his mother if he would become the chosen one and protect the other potential chosen ones—Yong Lei included—from terrible suffering. There was no other way. He couldn’t let his friends suffer in his place. If his mother rejected him, then he would bear that burden, as he had promised Master Chugi he could.

  The sun had risen fully over a wide gray horizon when the slope began to level out beneath Raijin’s feet. He passed through a neatly kept vineyard, plucking a few heavy purple grapes for his breakfast. They were warm with the summer heat and sweeter than that first moment stretching out on the bed mat after a hard day of work and training. He savored them with true delight, their juices renewing his exhausted body’s energy, but he was careful not to pick more than the common laws of civility would allow a hungry traveler. To do more would be the same as theft, and he had read stories of angry farmers requiring a finger or two in exchange for the extra grapes.

  At the vineyard’s edge, he found a rutted road to follow. A sea breeze ruffled his unruly hair and the tang of salt grew stronger in the air as he drew nearer the village. The sun seemed to shine on him from every angle at once. He tried to focus on the world outside of himself as he walked, push aside the fears of what might lie at the end of this road, but they refused to be ignored.

  After a time, he turned his focus inward to the pinging Hail-level Ro in his heartcenter and began putting it through the various strengthening exercises. It was strange to cultivate outside of the school. Over the years, he’d gotten so used to the familiar paths and places of his home that he hardly needed to pay attention to his surroundings while exercising his Ro. Walking this unfamiliar road, however, required him to focus as much on the new surroundings as on the exercises. The effort of doing both at once wore him out quickly, but it also managed to shoulder aside his anxiety over meeting his mother long enough to make it to the village.

  Kokuji’s streets were alive with the bustle of farmers coming in from the northern road Raijin now walked and fishers hauling their daily catch in from the beach to the south. Travelers of every shape, color, and size, wearing a multitude of styles, stood out from the locals in their drab robes and wooden platform-strapped shoes crossing muddy, churned-up streets inches above the muck.

  Raijin soon found himself in a central market crowded with people purchasing food, spices, wine, cloth, ivory, fish, meat, vegetables, fruits, and pots. There were jars of liquid that sellers shouted would advance Ro, but these were made of nothing Raijin had ever heard of. Hunters hawked piles of cured hides and tiny cloth bags they claimed contained true demon core stones. Raijin looked to see if any of the hunters had the skins or core stone of a guai-ray and its pups, but saw none. Good. He would hate to see what sort of carnage Zhuan could wreak in this busy market before the hunters killed her.

  After a while wandering the boardwalks, Raijin finally admitted to himself that he was unable to find the teahouse on his own. None of these buildings had signs declaring their name or purpose; the locals all just seemed to know where they were going. Unsure where else to turn, Raijin stopped at the nearest fish stall, where a bored-looking, sunbaked man sat on a wooden crate, carving intricate designs into a thick, yellowed bone of some kind.

  “Excuse me, uncle,” Raijin said politely, “but can you tell me how to find the teahouse?”

  The man looked up from his work. His eyes were a gray-blue like the sky over the ocean, surrounded by crinkles, and perpetually squinted from too much time in the sunlight.

  “You’re too young for that, little nephew. Why don’t you go find a nice girl and see if she’ll let you hold her hand?”

  Raijin’s face heated. “I wasn’t going for...that. My mother is there.”

  The man’s sun-bleached eyebrows climbed toward his graying hair. He squinted at Raijin with new eyes, taking in the scratches and bruises and tears in his clothing that he’d obtained the night before on the run for his life.

  “She rent you off for qajong money?” the man asked.

  This sparked a memory of what Master Chugi had said about his mother’s addiction. A dull pang of anger shot through Raijin’s stomach that this man would guess such a thing without even knowing her.

  “No, uncle,” Raijin said, straining to keep his voice civil. “I’m trying to find her. I’ve never met my mother.”

  “Oh,” the man said, nodding as if in understanding. “Her apothecary found out she had a baby and is trying to wring what she owes out of you and your adopted family.”

  “No. You see, her name is—”

  “Better I don’t know.” The man held up both hands to stop Raijin from speaking. “Don’t want to be thinking about her having a kid your age running around if I’m ever with her.”

  Raijin fought off the urge to scowl. It was becoming harder and harder to be polite to the man. But it was as Master Palgwe had said—he hadn’t trained his entire life to give in to his nature.

  He took a calming breath, released it, then asked, “Can you tell me where the teahouse is, uncle?”

  With a groan, the sunbaked man stood and stretched his back.

  “You take that street over there until it runs out,” he said, pointing with his carved bone. This close, Raijin could see a tiny scene taking shape on the bone, dozens of little fishermen hauling intricate nets full of fish into boats on a foaming sea. “Get to the end, you take a left. It will be the last building on your left, the doors are painted with all sorts of pretty flowers and what have you. The red lanterns won’t be lit in the middle of the day, but you’ll still be able to see their shades. No mistaking them.”

  Raijin bowed to the man. “Thank you.”

  The man nodded over his own hands, then plopped back down on the crate and returned to his carving.

  Raijin followed the man’s instructions down the street, took a left, another left onto a boardwalk, then came out at the end of the street in front of a garish yellow-and-green two-story building. Its door was decorated with night glories, ghost lilies, blood blossoms, and beauty berry clusters. At one time the painting had been a vibrant sight, but now it was faded and peeling with age.

  He stood staring at the peeling paint for a long time. His mother was in there. What would she be like? Master Chugi had remembered her as beautiful, but troubled. Would Raijin recognize her by sight? Would she recognize him? What would she say? Master Chugi had said s
he wept as she left her baby behind. But she had still left him behind. What did that mean?

  Raijin waited out on the boardwalk for so long that the door opened.

  A plump little woman with a brightly painted face sauntered out onto the porch, tucking a stray hair up into her bun and pinning it in place with a decorative stick.

  Raijin’s legs went weak, and his heart raced, blanking everything in his mind in a bright flare of adrenaline. Was this...? Could she be...?

  The little woman saw him and shook her head.

  “Too young!” She flapped her hands at him, shaking expensive bracelets and sending the sun glinting off gilt-painted nails. “Get out of here. Don’t try to peep. No free shows. Go!”

  Raijin opened his mouth, but no words would come.

  “Go, little boy, shoo!” she snapped.

  He had to say something. He had to ask her. If she was the one and he didn’t say anything, if she sent him away before he even spoke... But he couldn’t force his voice to work.

  “Now or I’ll shout for my security man,” she threatened. “Have him drag you all the way home to mama.”

  “Uh—that’s why—apologies, honored aunt—that is why I—you can’t send your nephew home because I live at the School of Darkening Skies on the top of the mountain—or I did live there, but now I can’t go back because I didn’t do my serving tasks this morning because Master Chugi made me leave because he said my time was over following that path, and they won’t let me back in because of the chores—oh, I already said that...” His flash flood of words finally tapered off. Raijin tried to collect himself. Bowed. “Honored aunt, I am looking for my mother. She gave me to the school on the mountaintop when I was a baby. Her name is Ji Yu Lanfen.”

  The little woman’s dark eyes doubled in size, and her painted black lips dropped open.

  Tears filled her eyes. Rather than engulfing him in a hug, however, the little woman dropped to her knees and pressed her forehead to the dirty boardwalk.