by Anthony Ryan
“It wasn’t a school, it was an Order, one of six in service to the Faith. Brothers of the Sixth were charged with protection of the Faith, and such protection requires use of weapons. I imagine she told you of the many hardships I suffered in its service. As for regrets, I have too many to easily count, but I can no more regret joining the Order than a sailor can regret the storm that sweeps his ship into calmer waters. I was a child. I knew no better.”
A dense wall of mist descended shortly after, reducing the view of the staircase to barely a few feet ahead. Sho Tsai’s steadily climbing form became ghostlike, although Vaelin was able to discern that he moved at a slower, more deliberate pace, maintaining a carefully measured distance between them. Close enough for a swift sword stroke, or a hard shove, he judged, eyes flicking to the edge of the stairway. There was no balustrade or other barrier, and the drop beyond was dizzying in its sheerness. He’ll tell Lian Sha of the unfortunate accident, the clumsy barbarian losing his footing on the way to the High Temple.
“One of your soldiers called Tsai Lin the third egg in your nest,” he said. If they were destined to fight on this mountainside, then he saw only one of two outcomes and therefore little need to restrain his questions. “I assume that means you have two other children.”
The captain’s wraithlike silhouette stiffened a little but he kept walking. “I did. A son and a daughter. They died beside their mother when the red sickness came.”
Vaelin bit down on a sigh. He had intended to enquire why a married man would dishonour himself by falling in love with a foreigner, but suddenly the cruelty of it shamed him. He didn’t hate this man; he envied him. “The Merchant King told me you have been in love with Sherin ever since you escorted her to his court,” he said. “Was your love returned?”
Sho Tsai came to a halt, hands slipping to his sides as he turned to face Vaelin. “That is not your concern.” The captain’s tone was mostly void of emotion save for a grim sense of purpose.
“You wanted to marry her, I assume?” Vaelin went on. He also stopped, positioning himself three steps below the captain, a fair distance to evade the attack he knew to be imminent. Even though the mist concealed Sho Tsai’s face, Vaelin had long attuned himself to the posture of those intent on his death. “But the Merchant King forbade it, didn’t he?” he enquired, maintaining an affable tone. “One of his favourite officers sullying his honour by marrying a foreigner. Unthinkable, yes?”
Sho Tsai’s gathering rage showed in the hunch to his shoulders and the slow shift of his hands. “Unthinkable,” he agreed, voice clipped. “As unthinkable as me allowing her to set eyes on you again. You ask about her love? What do you know of it? Do you have any notion of what you did to her? The wound you opened in her heart?”
“I did what I had to . . .” Vaelin trailed off, the words fading under the weight of truth, a truth he had always known but rarely allowed himself to hear. “I was a coward,” he said. “And a fool. I allowed myself to fall victim to the folly of prophecy and the arrogance of believing destiny actually possesses any meaning. My only defence is that in that time and place, I had no doubts. She had to leave and I had to stay.” The blood-song allowed only certainty. “I am not here to regain her love. I know I lost it many years ago. I am here to preserve her life, for that is what I owe her.”
Sho Tsai’s hands paused in their course, his occluded form taking on a stillness that made him appear part of the indifferent rock of the mountain. “Know this,” he said, the anger in his voice replaced by an unnerving, implacable sincerity. “She is paramount to me. She is above all else and I will allow no further injury to her, in body or in soul. If the Stahlhast have her, I will kill them all to retrieve her. If you reopen her wounds, I’ll kill you too even though she may hate me for it.”
He turned away and resumed his climb, moving with a renewed swiftness and surely deaf to any reply Vaelin might offer.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
The High Temple lay under a bright sun that dappled its tiled roofs with gold. Vaelin thought it as impressive an example of architecture as he had ever seen, in the sheer unlikeliness of its construction if not in scale. The various buildings, large and small, seemed to blossom out from the mountain’s summit like the petals of a monumental flower. Balconies and roofs extended out above the surrounding mantle of cloud around a raised centre where a tower six storeys tall rose into the sky.
“Who built this place?” he asked Sho Tsai as his gaze roved the marvellous spectacle of it all.
“Many hands over many years,” the captain said. “Warlords, emperors and kings all contributed wealth and labour to craft the home of the Jade Princess. It has changed with the passage of years. She was the only eternal thing here.”
Sho Tsai led him through an outer ring of gardens towards the central tower, passing a number of gardeners along the way. Vaelin took note of the manner in which they went about their duties, each one grim faced and stooped as they clipped bushes or swept leaves, offering only cursory bows to the two visitors and vaguely curious glances at Vaelin. Once he and Shao Tsai were within the confines of the temple proper, the atmosphere grew yet more sombre. Plain-robed servants swept floors with desultory dutifulness, one even weeping openly as she worked her broom across the stones. Grief, Vaelin thought, recognising the pitch of her sobs.
A woman awaited them at the top of the stairs leading to the central tower. Like the gatekeeper she wore a red and black robe, her grey-streaked hair swept back from handsome, angular features that betrayed a faint but apparently genuine pleasure at the sight of Sho Tsai.
“Brother of the Spear,” she said, bowing. Her tone was one of forced conviviality and shot through with a poorly suppressed quaver. “Twenty years absence and yet you barely look any older.”
“Mother Wehn.” Sho Tsai offered a bow an inch lower than hers. “Some may say your dishonesty shames your robe, but it is welcome nonetheless. This”—he straightened with a strained smile as he gestured to Vaelin—“is Lord Al Sorna from the east. We are here on the Merchant King’s business.”
“Of that I have little doubt.” Mother Wehn exchanged bows with Vaelin, her eyes surveying him with a keen scrutiny. “You are from the healer’s land, are you not? You possess the same colouring.”
“I am.”
“But”—her eyes tracked from his face to the sword on his back—“you are no healer.”
“No, lady, I am not.”
She gave a short, tight smile and stepped aside, opening a hand in welcome. “No doubt you have questions. I will do my best to answer, though what use it may be I know not.”
She led them along a wide, torchlit hallway, which soon opened out into a broad circular chamber with high windows. The shutters were open to allow a stiff mountain breeze to pervade the room, which somehow failed to chill the skin. Vaelin found himself drawn to the nearest window, his gaze captured by the view. He could see beyond the enclosing cotton blanket of cloud to the foothills to the south and the grasslands beyond. A journey that had taken over two weeks was now rendered to minuscule proportions.
“Has anything been touched?” Sho Tsai asked, drawing Vaelin’s attention from the window. The captain stood at the edge of a slightly elevated dais in the centre of the room. It held a richly embroidered carpet upon which sat a small couch. A porcelain teapot rested on a table alongside several cups. Beside the couch a stringed musical instrument of some kind rested in an ebony stand. It vaguely resembled a harp but with an asymmetrical frame and a more elaborate arrangement to the strings.
“Nothing,” Mother Wehn replied. “It is all exactly as she left it.”
Sho Tsai seemed mostly preoccupied with the musical instrument, his eyes lit with fascination as he tentatively extended a hand towards it, the fingers coming within a hair’s breadth of the string before he clenched his fist. “She left it behind,” he said, his fascination now coloured by
incredulity.
“She left everything behind,” Mother Wehn told him. “Save for her favourite coat and the shoes she wore when she toured the gardens.” The woman gave a helpless shrug. “I am sorry, Brother Sho, but I fear there is nothing here that will assist you. The healer came. They talked alone for a time until dusk, then retired for the night. In the morning they were gone and no eyes in this temple saw them leave.”
“Perhaps,” Vaelin said, “if we knew what they talked about it could offer some clue as to their destination.”
“I regret I cannot tell you, lord. The Princess insisted on talking to the healer alone. Whatever passed between them is lost.” Mother Wehn’s fingers trembled a little as she played a hand along the couch’s delicately carved armrest. “I simply cannot imagine what words could have compelled her to . . . abandon us in such a manner.”
“The healer was sent for,” Vaelin said. “There must have been a reason.”
He saw the tremble in the woman’s fingers take on an increased agitation before she too, like the captain, clenched her fist. She concealed both hands in the sleeves of her robe and stood with her brow furrowed in indecision until replying in a soft murmur. “She coughed.”
“Coughed?” Sho Tsai’s voice was suddenly loud and he stared at Mother Wehn as if she had spoken some form of blasphemy. “The Jade Princess coughed?”
Mother Wehn nodded and swallowed. “It happened only once, but I heard it, as did the servants who brought her tea at the appointed hour. One of the girls dropped the tray and began to weep. Silly little whelp. The princess, however, seemed unperturbed despite our fussing. In the end she allowed us to send for the Healing Grace, for who else could better tend to the Jade Princess? Now, of course, I wish she had ignored us.”
“I assume,” Vaelin said, “she had never coughed before?”
“Illness is beneath her. As is hunger or cold. She drank and ate but only in deference to the lesser souls who inhabit this temple. I was but a novice of sixteen summers when I came here to serve her. In all the years since, I never heard her cough nor sniff nor groan, even as I groan ever more with each passing day.”
Did you ever hear her lie? Vaelin left the question unsaid, suspecting Mother Wehn might well faint at the implication. A truly sick soul never coughs only once. The Jade Princess is not above subterfuge, it seems. She wanted Sherin to come here. But why?
“The world beyond this temple is troubled,” he said. “Enemies menace your borders. Did the princess know of this?”
Mother Wehn nodded. “Every week a messenger comes from the Prefecture capital bearing a scroll listing all major events in the kingdoms, and beyond. It has been this way for a very long time. The bowels of the temple are full of scrolls dating back centuries.”
“A valuable archive for any historian,” Vaelin mused, pondering just how much Brother Harlick would pay for access to such knowledge.
“Only she is ever permitted to read the scrolls,” Mother Wehn said. “Countless scholars have sent letters begging to be allowed just an hour in the archive, but they are always refused.”
She must have the clearest picture of history of any living soul, Vaelin surmised. Even more so than Erlin. And yet she guards her knowledge jealously. Something she doesn’t want the merely mortal to know, perhaps?
“Did she seem alarmed by the recent news?” Sho Tsai asked. “If she feared for the security of the kingdom, perhaps she felt compelled to flee.” From his increasingly furrowed brow, Vaelin deduced he was as confused by what had occurred here as Mother Wehn.
They don’t see her as human, Vaelin realised. To them she is a fixture of this temple, like a statue. The notion summoned memories of a huge weathered stone head he once found amidst the ruins of the Fallen City in the Lonak Dominion beyond the Realm’s north-eastern border. Ages past it had been carved to commemorate a great man who would in time become a monster. But all statues turn to dust in the end.
“She does not fear any more than she hungers,” Mother Wehn replied with a faintly offended sniff. “She read the most recent scrolls with the same assiduous care but no particular sign of concern.”
“There must be something,” Sho Tsai insisted. “She was not taken from this temple. She clearly chose to leave. There must be more to this than a single cough.”
Mother Wehn began to shake her head but then stopped, the crease of her brow deepening. “There was one thing,” she said. “But it happened months ago. Her song . . . She perfected her song.”
Vaelin watched Sho Tsai’s gaze shift back to the harp, his confusion briefly transforming into outright fear before he reimposed his usual rigid mask. “Her song,” he repeated, voice soft. “The Song of the Ages.”
“Quite.”
Vaelin recalled the first tale Erlin had told of the Jade Princess some years ago during the advance through the mountains of northern Volaria. Uncounted years spent in practice of voice and harp. Her song is not perfected, she hasn’t finished, perhaps she never will.
“Song of the Ages?” he asked.
“She knew many others,” Mother Wehn replied. “And would play them for our amusement when the mood took her. But the Song of the Ages she would play every day, often several times a day. No matter how many times I heard it, I never grew tired of the tune or the words. It was almost as if she were singing a different song with each rendition.”
“The words. What do they say?”
“The song was crafted so long ago the language is indecipherable to the modern ear.”
“And she never provided a translation?”
“Such is not her way, and it is not our place to ask.”
“But she told you she perfected it?”
“Not in so many words. But it was clear enough. I was in this chamber the last time she played it. This time the tone, the mood of it was very different. More sombre somehow. I must confess I shed tears at the beauty of it, and the sadness. There was something about the sound, the notes, they seemed to . . .” Mother Wehn trailed off, shaking her head. “I am a foolish old woman.”
“Please,” Vaelin pressed. “What was it?”
“It was almost like being . . . cut, being opened. But there was no pain, only a sense of revelation. Memories I hadn’t recalled in years spilled into my mind. So many faces, so much pain, so much joy. I thought perhaps some treacherous servant had slipped a befuddling concoction into the tea, but no, it was the song. Joyous as it was, I say honestly that I hope I never hear it again.”
Mother Wehn blinked tears and turned away, taking a moment to reassert her composure before speaking again. “When the last note faded the Jade Princess set her harp upon the stand and said, ‘Well, so it is done.’ From that day on she didn’t play another note.”
The cough was her final note, and her farewell. “Thank you, lady,” Vaelin said.
She nodded and then fixed him with a bright, beseeching gaze. “Can you . . . will you return her to us? Without her, this place is nothing. Without her, these lands face ruin. I know it in my heart.”
Vaelin had long ago learned the folly of making promises but in this he felt an obligation to at least provide a partial truth. “I will find her,” he said. Whether she will ever return here is another matter.
Mother Wehn gave a grateful smile before her sorrow returned and she lowered her gaze. “You must forgive me,” she whispered, hurrying from the chamber. “I am remiss in not organising refreshment for such honoured guests.”
“The cough was a deception,” Sho Tsai said after Mother Wehn left the chamber.
“I don’t believe the woman who dwelt here is capable of illness,” Vaelin replied.
“And the song. You think it significant.”
“Centuries spent labouring to perfect an ancient song that can conjure unbidden memories, then she has Sherin summoned here on the pretence of illness and disappears the same night.�
�� Vaelin gave a faint laugh. “Yes, I think it’s significant.”
“But hardly likely to lead us to them.” The captain went to a north-facing window, gazing out at the vast tract of mountain and valley. “With no trail to follow, no witnesses, we could search for years and find not a trace. And I doubt the Stahlhast will allow us such leisure.”
Vaelin’s gaze returned to the forsaken harp of the Jade Princess. It occurred to him that it might well sit in its stand for years, even centuries to come. An untouched relic of the blessed being that once resided here, its strings forever silent. She had a song, he thought. A song of the Dark, as once did I. And I was not the only singer.
“The town where Sherin made her home,” he said, turning to Sho Tsai. “Is it far from here?”
“Thirty miles due east,” the captain replied with a puzzled shrug. “But what use is going there? The local Dien-Ven have already searched her home and found no clue to her destination.”
“She didn’t live alone,” Vaelin said, trying but failing to keep the reluctance from his voice. “Did she?”
“She had rooms above a stonemason’s shop. A highly skilled and respected man, as I recall.”
Forgive me, old friend. “The stonemason,” Vaelin said. “He can find her.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The town of Min-Tran sat atop a broad rise in the rolling hill country that dominated the Northern Prefecture of the Venerable Kingdom. Its buildings were taller than those Vaelin had seen so far, all constructed from stone rather than wood and nestled within walls that were even taller, also well maintained.
A place of stone, Vaelin thought, a smile playing over his lips as they rode through the main gate. Where better for him to make a home?
“It would be better if I talked to him alone,” he told Sho Tsai. They had continued through the gate without pause, the captain leading the company along a broad thoroughfare into the town’s western quarter. “He may take some persuading.”