by Alec Hutson
She climbed the steps and entered the temple. Inside, a thousand votive candles had been lit among the forest of red pillars, their flickering flames marching in rows towards the great golden statue at the temple’s center: Sagewa Tain, first among mortals to reach an understanding of the Self. Incense spiced the air, and the faint chime of devotional bells echoed in the distance.
Master Ren was seated cross-legged before the looming statue, his eyes closed and his hands shaping the mudra of understanding.
Cho Lin’s bare feet made no sound on the gleaming stone floor, but Master Ren spoke without opening his eyes before she had approached to within fifty paces.
“Mistress Lin. Welcome, child. You have attained perfection far sooner than we dared hope.”
She halted, taking a deep breath to master herself. “Enlightened One, I must admit failure in my quest for the Self. I come here because I have been called away from Red Fang Mountain.”
Now Master Ren looked at her. His eyes were the piercing black of a desert hawk’s, windows to the Nothing within his Self.
“Truly, a pity.” His expression of calm detachment did not waver.
Cho Lin couldn’t contain herself any longer. “Master, how long have you known that my father is dead?”
Five heartbeats of silence. The candle flames seemed to bend away from her, as if disturbed by her agitation.
“There were rumors, brought to us by pilgrims.”
“And how trustworthy were these rumors?”
The abbot’s fingers shifted to the mudra of sympathy. “Very.”
Cho Lin concentrated on the Nothing, willing herself to tranquility. “And you did not see fit to inform me?”
Was that a tightness at the corner of his mouth? Such a loss of control was almost as surprising as the news of her father’s death.
“You were on a quest for the Self. The first step on such a journey is to abandon your ties to this world, as you well know. To disturb your meditations would be a betrayal of our most fundamental principles. The Cho Lin who came to us would agree with my words. She knew that this world is merely a realm of ghosts and mirrors, a pale reflection of the Self.”
“Yet you allowed my family’s servant to enter my cell.”
The faint lines on the abbot’s face vanished, like ripples fading away after a stone had sunk to the bottom of a pond. “He came to us bearing a writ from Lord Cho. In this world, we cannot deny one such as he.”
“That’s impossible. Lord Cho is –” My brother. A cold fist clutched at her heart. Her brother was now Lord Cho.
The abbot watched her carefully. “Mistress Lin, rarely does Red Fang Mountain admit disciples such as yourself. Most who arrive at our temple are orphans, lacking ties to any place or people. Thus, it is easier for them to embark on their quest for the Self and shed the memories of this world. You were a special case. From one of the greatest families of Shan, first daughter of a lord listened to by many among the Thousand Voices, a child raised in the Jade Court. And far more advanced in her martial training than should have been possible by anyone outside of this mountain.”
“My father hired a Tainted Sword to train me when I was very young. But I had reached the limits of what he could teach me.”
“Yes. So you came to us. And I saw in you someone who could forsake her name and achieve immortality for her soul through a mastery of the Self.”
Cho Lin turned from the abbot, watching the dancing flames. “My father believed something different. He thought true immortality could only be attained through the family. Someday you must pass into the spirit realm, he once told me, but the glory your descendants bring to your name will sustain you in the afterlife. The body might die, but the family is truly eternal.”
Another pause. Master Ren’s fingers formed a mudra she did not know. “So the question you must ask yourself is this: are you Mistress Lin, disciple of Red Fang Mountain, or the Lady Cho, sister of a Jade Court mandarin?”
She met the abbot’s placid stare and matched it. “Neither. I am Cho Lin.”
After several months sequestered away in meditation, Cho Lin’s body was not happy to return to the saddle. She shifted uncomfortably, trying to find a spot where she wasn’t already chafed raw.
“Would you like to stop for a while, Mistress?”
Cho Lin waved away Kan Xia’s words, annoyed that the servant had noticed her discomfort. She had ridden for three days straight when she first passed through this forest on her way to Red Fang Mountain, and now after only a half-day on horseback she was already yearning for the goose-down bed and pillows that awaited her at her family’s estate outside Tsai Yin. Had her twenty months among the monks made her stronger, or weaker? Was she like a sword kept too long in the forge, tempered to brittleness by the fire’s heat? She twisted around in her saddle, trying to catch through a gap in the trees the glint of Gold Leaf Temple high up on the mountain’s slopes. What foolishness. That crucible had produced some of the world’s most legendary warriors. Any weakness was her own.
Well, even if riding still seemed strange at least something felt like it had finally been returned to her after too long. She almost felt guilty about how much she had missed the weight of the short butterfly swords strapped to her waist. The ancient blades had been given back to her when she left the temple, and despite her months of training to forsake just these kinds of worldly possessions, she hadn’t been able to resist a little thrill of pleasure when the carved ivory handles had again slipped into her hands.
The forest they rode through was darker than she remembered. Probably because she had first come to Red Fang Mountain in the waning days of winter, when the cold daylight filtering between empty branches had blazed upon bone-white trunks stripped bare by hungry deer. Now a full canopy arched overhead, serpentine vines wrapped the trees, and bright yellow flowers spotted the trail. And yet, the forest was just as silent as before. Just as silent; not even a note of birdsong, how strange –
A sharp hiss sliced the air. The Cho warrior who had accompanied Kan Xia toppled from his mare, his hands scrabbling at the arrow through his neck. Cho Lin threw herself from her horse, knocking Kan Xia from his saddle. Together they tumbled to the ground, her family’s servant emitting a strangled yelp of surprise that was cut short when he hit the grass hard. Cho Lin rolled away and came up in a low crouch, her butterfly swords already in her hands.
“Stay down,” she said to Kan Xia as she scanned the undergrowth for their ambushers. In response, he made a whimpering sound and buried his face in the grass. The horses stamped their feet and milled nervously as the Cho warrior thrashed between them in his death throes, his legs and arms drumming the earth.
Farther up the path four men had appeared. Cho Lin quickly moved so that her horse was between her and the ambushers. They did not have the look of bandits, that sense of frightened desperation which clung to men who had turned to thievery when their crops had failed or their livestock had been taken by the yellow-ear disease. Quiet competence was evident in the way they held themselves, in their tightly controlled movements as they approached with their weapons at the ready. And those weapons were too fine by far, city-forged or fletched. No, these were assassins.
Luckily, only one carried a bow. That might just save her life.
Cho Lin thrust her swords into the soft earth and slipped one of the shuriken that studded her belt into her hand.
“P-please,” she stammered, forcing fear into her voice. “M-my name is Cho Lin, of the clan Cho. My brother is rich and powerful. Anything you desire could be yours if you let me live!”
As she had hoped, some of the wary tension leaked from the three foremost warriors, including the bowman. Knowing smirks passed between them.
“Don’t listen to her!” commanded the fourth, who had stayed behind, standing on the path where they had first emerged from among the trees. “She is a Red Fang wa
rrior. Lies drip from her lips like venom from a snake. Kill her quickly!”
But it was too late. They were close enough now.
From between her horse’s legs, Cho Lin threw her shuriken at the bowman. Without watching to see where it struck, she surged to her feet, pulling her butterfly swords from the ground and leaping forward in one smooth motion. Her slippered foot touched lightly upon the saddle of her startled horse, then she gathered herself and jumped once more before the shocked assassins could even finish raising their swords. Time seemed to stretch and slow, the Nothing opening up within her. She took in everything before she’d even touched the ground again.
The bowman was down, his crossed eyes staring at the metal spike of the shuriken buried in his forehead. The assassin on the left held his broad-bladed beidao sword awkwardly—he was used to a lighter weapon. The one on the right appeared more balanced, and he reacted faster as Cho Lin hurtled closer. He was the greater threat.
She lashed out with both butterfly blades, batting aside the second assassin’s sword with one as she sliced open his shoulder with the other. He snarled and thrust at her and she twisted away, using the last bit of momentum from her jump to slip past him. She went to one knee, completing her motion by slashing backwards, and felt the slight resistance as her sword severed his hamstring. He collapsed, screaming, and she quickly rolled away and back to her feet, sensing the other assassin’s approach. Bellowing something unintelligible, he charged at her, hacking with his heavy sword; she easily turned aside each swing, and when he had overcommitted to a lunge she calmly stepped inside his guard and slipped her thin blade between his ribs, piercing his heart. His shocked eyes stared into hers for a brief moment, and then they fluttered closed as he slid to the ground.
Sparing a glance at the final assassin, still standing motionless some ways up the path, Cho Lin moved over to where the maimed warrior lay moaning, his bloodied fingers reaching desperately for the sword hilt just beyond his reach. She knelt beside him and cut his throat.
Cho Lin stood, sheathing her blades, and faced the last assassin. “Tell me who sent you.”
The fourth warrior chuckled, strolling closer. He pulled from his scabbard a curving sword and held it up, showing her what was carved upon the bronze hilt.
“You have a lotus blade,” she remarked, shifting her weight to the balls of her feet.
As he approached, she noticed how curiously flat and dead his eyes were. Like the corpses of the men at her feet.
“I do, girl.”
“Did you earn it fairly?”
The assassin seemed to consider her words. “In a manner of speaking. It belonged to my master. I killed him.”
“You are a Tainted Sword.”
He shrugged. “My master was a Tainted Sword, cast down from Red Fang for violating one of their ridiculous rules. I’m not sure what that makes me.”
Cho Lin put as much disdain as she could into her smile. “It makes you less than nothing.”
He laughed, but his eyes stayed cold and distant. “I suppose it would to a rich little lady like yourself.”
“Who sent you?”
He started working his lotus blade through some basic patterns. His movements were crisp, skilled.
“I am instructed not to say.”
She sighed. “You are dead anyway. Tell me, and I promise to burn an offering for your spirit at the Moon Stone Temple in Tsai Yin.”
Now he sneered. “So confident, little girl? You think you can measure my worth by these three fools? I have killed two masters of Red Fang in single combat, and a dozen members of the Jade Court. I am an assassin of the ninth circle in the Brotherhood of White Knives.”
Cho Lin snapped her blades into her hands. She noted absently that the ivory handle of one of her butterfly swords had been stained black by blood. She would have to clean it later. “Enough. I must return home. Let us finish this.”
They came together with a clash of steel.
Cho Lin arrived five days later at her family’s estate outside Tsai Yin, far from happy with the time she had made. The wound in her side was bothering her and had kept her from pushing her horse too hard—that, and Kan Xia in his awkward mothering had insisted they stop at almost every inn and guesthouse along the road, even if she could have easily ridden on. The lotus blade was wrapped in a blanket buried among her saddlebags, but all through their journey she had felt a heavy malignancy pulsing from where she had stored it, sending a cold prickling up her spine. It was a cursed blade, the tool for many black deeds. She would donate it to one of the temples here, hoping the prayers of monks could cleanse the darkness from its past, and perhaps even allow for a rebirth of the sword in the hands of a true warrior.
They rode past peasants sunk to their waists in the ponds ringing the Cho estate, bent-back old men and women with lined brown skin pulling rice from stalks as they sang ancient songs extolling the virtues of the common people. Mulberry trees pressed against the compound’s walls, and the season’s harvest must have been nearly finished as Cho Lin saw only a few children scurrying among the branches, pulling cocoons from the damp, dark places where the moths had hidden them in the boles of the trees. The orchards here, at the Tsai Yin estate, were barely a grove compared to the vast plantations her family owned to the west. Much of the Cho wealth was founded in silk production—Cho Lin’s distant ancestor, Cho Tzin, was even credited as the first to discover that the unspooled cocoon of the silk moth could be woven into luxuriant, shimmering cloth.
Cho Lin and Kan Xia passed through the Turtle Gate, the great stone portal carved with images ranging from the common painted-shell denizens of quiet streams and ponds to the sea-spanning titans that could cross the world with an army on their backs. The Cho warriors flanking the gate’s pillars gaped at her when she nodded at them, then snapped to attention. Within the outer walls the compound was a riot of activity: hammers rang upon the forges set up in a corner of the courtyard, grooms were leading horses to and from the stables, and servants rushed back and forth on tasks.
Cho Lin smiled, imagining what Min Min and Cook Po’s reactions would be when she sauntered into their kitchen. They would cry out and clap their hands and hurry to make her favorite dumplings, lamenting loudly about how thin she was.
But first she had to see her brother.
He waited for her within the innermost garden, a carefully sculpted labyrinth of twisting rock and shadowy paths which led to a small lake spotted with lily pads and lotus blossoms. Fragments of color, white and orange and black, flashed just beneath the surface of the water as the great schools of koi swarmed closer to where Cho Lin walked, hoping for a scattering of rice. She crossed the arching bridge that led to the small pavilion at the lake’s center. Her brother sat at the round stone table where their father had often spent his mornings reading, watching her approach.
He was not alone. Kneeling beside his bench was a beautiful young girl in a green dress, her long black hair unbound. Her eyes were downcast, and she held upraised in her hands a delicate porcelain tea cup decorated by cranes in flight.
Cranes. The symbols of fidelity. Of course.
Cho Jun smiled at her when she entered the pavilion, gesturing with a trembling hand for her to sit across from him.
“First brother,” Cho Lin said, taking her seat.
“First sister,” he replied.
They stared at each other. He was wearing their father’s imperial vestments, a long red-and-blue silk robe with a golden phoenix unfurling along its length. He also wore the scholar’s circular black cap, though Cho Lin knew he had never studied with any real diligence the Master’s teachings.
“Have you eaten?”
“I have. Some biscuits on the road. I’m not hungry.”
“Tea, then?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Her brother snapped his fingers, and the girl rose gracefully t
o pour her a cup from the pot on the table. Cho Lin breathed deep as the tea’s flavor reached her. Petals from the jasmine flower, her favorite, and a drink she hadn’t enjoyed since she’d left two years ago for Red Fang Mountain. Her brother wanted something.
She sipped her tea. The girl picked up her brother’s cup and brought it to his lips. He drank, watching Cho Lin over the rim.
She set down her cup. “You seem better.”
Her brother swallowed his tea and the girl returned to her knees, holding his cup aloft. “Do I? Life grows easier, certainly. I have learned to live with my weaknesses. It is a very important skill to c-c-cultivate.”
It would be almost ten years to the day, she suddenly realized, since someone in this very compound had slipped poison into her brother’s wine. It had not killed him, but the poison had so damaged his body that he had been rendered incapable of performing even the most basic of actions by himself. Unsure who the poisoner had been, Lord Cho had decided to execute all the servants who had touched his son’s cup that night.
No further poisonings had occurred.
“Our father is dead.”
“He is.”
“What happened? Kan Xia would not tell me.”
Her brother lifted something from the bench beside him and placed it on the table. It resembled very closely the wrapped sword she had stored among her saddle bags. Her heart began to beat faster.
“Our father,” Cho Jun began, running his fingers along the length of the bundle, “was a man of honor.”
“Of course.”
“While you were away, in the east, something happened, something momentous. An intruder snuck inside the w-w-warlock’s tower, pierced the ancient wards, and stole something.”
Coldness filled her. “What was stolen?”
“The chest.”
Cho Lin was having trouble staring at anything except the wrapped object on the table. “Was it the Raveling?”
“The warlocks think not. They think… they think it was a barbarian from the north. He or she used sorceries they had never f-felt before to slip past their wards.”