The Eighth King (The White Umbrella Testament Book 1)

by Matt Weber

  At the same time, Datang spoke. “I will not leave the Lady Pema.”

  “I wish you would,” said Netten.

  “I cannot. I have a holy charge.” She looked over to Lin Gyat. “And you, cursed of the Deity Who Waits, would do well not to abandon a child in need.”

  “Bah,” said Lin Gyat. “I do not expect that bloated clerk to save me from the hells.”

  “The Lotus, Envied of Snakes, it is his doom not to rest until he does so! Only give him cause!”

  Lin Gyat smiled strangely. “Ah, Left Hand. Sometimes men enjoy their dooms.”

  “I have no patience for such world-weary wisdom,” said Datang. “Lead on, Netten. Let us rescue your wife.”

  Netten looked at the three of them. The Giant of the Grass stared, furious, over her gag. Datang had a thought; she darted out into the hall, retrieved the stormcloud-grey staff, and tossed it to Lin Gyat. “Now we have one weapon, at least.”

  The Giant’s eyes slitted in rage. Netten looked back and forth between them. “Left Hand,” he said, “escort us to the women’s chambers.”

  The Duke relied more heavily on sorcerous alarums than any of them had anticipated, or so it seemed, and after killing only a brace of guardsmen and threatening several household staff with dire tortures and rendition to exotic hells, Lin Gyat and Mother-of-Daughters (the latter riding on the former’s back) were nearly down the curtain-rope to the estate’s grounds before they heard the horns and gongs that sounded their escape. Netten had bid them sight by the Judicious Star and run as fast as they could—which would be no difficulty for Lin Gyat, who chased horses, but might yet pose problems for the comrades who would attempt to follow him. “Still,” Netten pointed out, “at least until the Third Blight ends, Envied of Snakes is Pema’s best hope for salvation.”

  “You mean the biggest,” Datang said as the huge fighter and his charge started down the rope. They had left the staff with Netten; Datang and Lin Yongten had sabres scavenged from the Duke’s guard.

  “And you the strongest,” said Netten, “though his speed is far from inconsequential in this context. But, over and above all that, he is the least desirable target. Whereas, for whatever reason, the Duke desires me at his ‘seminary’; whereas the Eager Edge here has fearsomely slaughtered two of the Duke’s more expensive retainers, and you—” He shrugged. “I do not know what has transpired between you and the Giant of the Grass, but I think it will take some force or distance to shake her off the chase.”

  “What do you suppose he wants you for?” said Datang, just now thinking on the issue.

  “I cannot imagine he would care for whatever I might think to lecture on,” said Netten. “At a guess, I think his ‘seminary’ is a feedlot for the Worm. And I think he had me in mind as his prize steer.”

  “That does not sound so bad,” said Datang, “though how he would breed you in a seminary—”

  “Steer, not stud. For when the Priestkiller Worm comes calling—”

  “Ah,” said Datang. “Well, perhaps you can ask him now.”

  For the Duke, still resplendent in midnight blue, had entered the chambers—ahead of, not behind, a phalanx of mailed guardsmen with spears and glaives. He wore a breastplate, greaves on his shins and forearms, and a pair of sabres that, even as Datang watched, he eased from their sheaths with all the effort of a master tailor sewing a straight seam.

  “You should have left while confusion reigned,” said the Duke. “I would not have harmed your woman much, not while she was worth something to you. What sorcery did you do?”

  “No sorcery,” said Netten. “Chance and the Third Blight favored me.”

  “The Third Blight,” said the Duke, with the tone of an oath—the sort one utters when one’s opponent has made a brilliant move at Desert Kings… and yet still trails by two footmen and the vizier. “Why did I not think to plan for that?”

  “I would not dream to speculate on the Duke’s deficiencies, lest I become immoderate.”

  The Duke smiled thinly. “Spare the Regent,” he said to his men. “As to the others, do not discommode yourselves.”

  The three comrades were swiftly forced back to the corner, but they formed a small arc against the window and fought brilliantly, Netten and his staff facing down the Duke of Imja’s sabres with lightning counters and ingenious ripostes. Both men were masters of the fence, yet Datang could feel them hobbled—Netten unused to the weight and inertia of his weapon, the Duke just slightly heavy-footed, slightly too keen to attack on the low line, as though he were used to fighting from a height. Datang, for her part, confused the first spearman who attacked her by dodging past his point, inside his guard. She had sighted the dagger in his belt before choosing her move, and from there it was a matter of formalities: Sundering the Elm from the second Dragon grappling set concealed her acquisition, and Sloth Shades His Eyes opened his throat. She could not perceive the details of what Lin Yongten did on the other side of Netten, but he had got hands on two halves of a broken pike and was laying about him with the same disquieting neutrality of visage that he had maintained while slaying the house-wizards. But the press of bodies and the Duke’s impenetrable skill pushed them tightly together, back to back to back.

  “We cannot hew through this press like lumberjacks,” said Datang. “A phalanx is not a forest. Eager Edge, are you familiar with the principles of architecture?”

  “The Lotus, Left Hand—”

  “What is the part of the arch that holds the rest in place?”

  “I take your meaning, but I cannot spare—” The Green Morning brother stopped himself. “No, you are right. Count the mark.”

  “Four, three, two—”

  On “two,” Datang put a foot in the chest of her opponent and pushed him back—not far, unaided as she was by the Crane’s Migration Step, but enough to open a way to the Duke. From the corner of her eye, she saw Lin Yongten give up the glaive-headed half of his paired weapons to stagger the guardsman to his left—again, a poor calculation on its own terms, but like hers, a means to an end. Netten, as though he perceived the maneuvers, made a whirling strike in the plane that connected him and the Duke, leaving the lanes clear to his right and left, and as the Duke issued a contemptuous parry-riposte, blocking the staff with one hand and piercing Netten’s shoulder with the other—

  —and as Datang’s jostled opponent licked out with a haft-strike to her skull that she had no hope of blocking—

  —and as one of the guardsmen facing Lin Yongten dodged the staggering body of his comrade to send a spear-stroke licking around him like a serpent’s tongue—

  —Datang’s dagger hooked over the Duke’s unmailed thigh, shearing his robes and then the flesh of his leg—

  —and the broken end of Lin Yongten’s remaining half-pike shredded the Duke’s neck, burying itself not deeply but bloodily in his flesh.

  The Duke’s eyes widened and his mouth gaped, and his muscles grew slack, and the sabre left Netten’s shoulder as its hilt dropped from nerveless fingers.

  Then the spearhead slid smoothly into the flesh of Lin Yongten’s unguarded flank; and the spear-haft connected with Datang’s skull, filling her field of view with the explosion of dark stars and sending her staggering against her wounded friends—even as Netten sank to his knees, taking the weight of Lin Yongten, who was on his knees as well but still could not support himself.

  But the guardsmen were standing stock-still, for a moment and then two, as their Duke lay bleeding badly on the ground.

  “The Crescent,” said a voice from behind them, “have I missed the violence again?”

  Datang, still barely able to control her limbs, looked back. Lin Gyat, still in his high priest’s robes, practically filled the window.

  She looked back at the guardsmen. There were only five of them standing. Their eyes were huge. She forced herself not to reel.

  “One of you had best fetch a medic,” Datang said, “and reinforcements. Another had best pinch that artery in the Duke’s
leg, and another had best compress his neck.” She forced herself to smile. Netten was standing now, himself, holding a sabre bright with his own blood. He was whispering something to Lin Yongten, who staggered over to the window. “The rest may feel free to attempt subdual of the Gracious Regent and myself. But, you perceive, this worthy fighting monk lends pungent rhetoric to our side of the debate, whereas you will find that you—” she gestured toward the Duke with as much contempt as she could muster without falling over—“have conceded the very crux of your argument.”

  Lin Gyat hopped easily into the room and picked up a glaive from a fallen guardsman. The rearmost standing fled. As though catalyzed by their comrade’s action, the other four swooped at once to save the Duke, squabbling over whose fingers were best suited to block the egress of heart’s blood from the ducal vasculature.

  “Envied of Snakes,” said Netten, “take the Eager Edge. Quickly, now. We will follow.”

  An odd peace ruled the room for the minute that it took for Lin Gyat to carry Lin Yongten down the curtain rope. Netten tore a sheet to bind his wound; Datang simply leaned against the wall and tried to recover her balance. She offered Netten the next place on the rope, but he demurred and she could not find it in her to insist. As she reached the bottom and Netten began his descent, the Giant of the Grass bellowed a string of oaths that rang through the window into the night. Steel flashed; the rope went slack and fell, cut—but Netten was ready, and slowed himself on a snag in the basalt before landing, lightly and gracefully, on the ground. He took off at a sprint toward the bamboo, and she, miraculously, kept up. A few crossbow bolts skittered from the cobbles of the courtyard and buried themselves in the hard soil, and then they were in the bamboo with Lin Gyat and Lin Yongten and Mother-of-Daughters, all moving as fast as any of them could manage. To the south, and west, and Pongyo Gorge.

  “Just imagine,” said Datang at some point later, “what would have passed had the Duke taken a minute to free the Giant of the Grass before he found us.”

  “Just imagine,” said Netten, “what would have passed if you had left the room last instead of me.”

  They had stopped, perhaps a mile or two into the bamboo, to bind Lin Yongten’s wound, for he was growing pale and faint. Mother-of-Daughters had long ago given up on keeping pace; Lin Gyat carried her on his shoulders as they moved. Datang was nervous at the thought of stopping, but the relief was unmistakable; the pain in her head had spread beyond the site of her haft-wound and across her forehead, and she had begun to have trouble hearing the others. Both the lady and the giant warrior stood nervously by as Netten and Datang tended to the quiet fencer’s wound.

  “How safe are we here?” Datang asked as they worked. “Perhaps they cannot track us when the river of rlung is dammed and they cannot move easily over the grass… and perhaps not. But even if it is the case, how long could the Third Blight last?”

  “That is difficult to say,” said Netten. “The longer the Worm lets it linger, the more death and discord he sows. But the supernatural does not permeate our lives as thoroughly as once it did; the gods’ machines have supplanted it in many cases, and centuries of peace have attenuated the study of the Rigors. When White Tenshing walked the Rafters of the World, even a vintner’s daughter would know a warrior of the Giant’s caliber, or the Duke’s.”

  “Even now, a vintner’s daughter may acquaint herself with such,” said Datang.

  Netten smiled. “Not and stay at her winery. Or am I mistaken?”

  “No,” said Datang, “it is fair enough. Before my contretemps with the Golden Bat on the Road of Bulls, the closest ever I came to the gallant fraternity was a report of a report of an encounter with Phog the Lesser. And I do not even know if he possessed any talent.”

  “Some credit Phog’s penetration of the Pretender’s ranks to the Diamond Word,” said Lin Gyat, “but I know better. He earned his accomplishments through raw skill and persistence.”

  Datang turned to him, annoyed. “Your insinuation is invidious.”

  Lin Gyat only returned a puzzled stare. Mother-of-Daughters looked up at him and laughed. Datang contemplated explaining herself—to wit, explaining that the Rigors were tools at least as difficult to learn and work with as any in the repertoire of a man operating only on “raw skill and persistence”—but it did not take long to realize that such an argument, deployed against Lin Gyat, would be as doomed as a donkey in a bog.

  “Wife,” said Netten without looking up, “how came you here?”

  “Over the Cradle, naturally,” said Mother-of-Daughters, as though it were a common jaunt for women of the Orchid Court.

  “Who was your escort?”

  Mother-of-Daughters looked downcast at that. “A ranger named Gawan, styled the Brilliant Goat. The same that brought Sonam and her fiancé to Imja. The Giant judged him as more liability than asset—a competent climber and fighter, worth a ransom to no one.” It was hard to tell by starlight, but Datang thought she could see Mother-of-Daughters turn to face her, feel some ill-specified weight of meaning in her gaze.

  Netten softly named the Deity Who Waits. “The Eager Edge has lost consciousness,” he said.

  Mother-of-Daughters turned away from Datang to look at him. “I will seek help.”

  “No.”

  Her back straightened; the shadows of her face seemed to sharpen in the moonlight. “Husband of my heart you may be, but of my heart only; neither gods nor laws bind me to you.”

  “They bind my daughter to me.”

  “You may try to take her if you like.”

  “You are generations removed from your ancestors,” said Netten, “and they are removed from these spirits by times denominated in the ages of mountains. Cross one and it will kill us all. I cannot protect you, not without the Rigors.” He did not say it, but Datang heard the phrase ring clear as a bell in the wake of Netten’s words: My daughter.

  “See,” said Lin Gyat, “this is where a man like Phog the Lesser could make a difference.”

  “Your man will die if I do not summon help,” said Mother-of-Daughters. “He gave his heart’s blood to free me from that hell of wife-killing basalt—is that not so?”

  “I love Lin Yongten like a brother,” said Netten. “Better, in truth.” Fleet pain came and went across his features, the shadow of a hawk crossing the sun. “But he is a man grown, who has lived his life by steel. I must protect this child.” Something in Datang thrilled to the assertion.

  “You cannot protect her from her heritage,” said Mother-of-Daughters, and the bitterness and warmth were so potent in the phrase that Datang felt them on her tongue. “And what is your protection worth, husband, when you intend to revoke it before the Fourth Blight strikes the sky? Your Lin Yongten will be a more steadfast guard, no doubt.”

  “Revoke my protection?” said Netten. “I will stand between my girl and harm until I breathe my last.”

  “Yes,” said Mother-of-Daughters, “and then half-orphan her, that you may donate your last breath to some evil stranger before she draws her first.”

  The silence hung. Mother-of-Daughters turned to Lin Gyat and snatched the stormcloud-grey staff from him. “Console my husband, giant. His moral education is too advanced; words lacerate him more easily than he cares to admit.” She started off into the grass.

  Lin Gyat turned to follow her. “No,” said Netten. “She goes to the night-grass where the spirits live. They will drink you dry.”

  “So you once warned me,” said the monk-clad boxer, “as an inducement. Now I am to take it as a caution?”

  “Yes.”

  Datang looked down at Lin Yongten’s shallow breathing, then over to Netten. “I cannot help him now. Let me escort your wife.”

  Netten nodded. “Of course. Go.”

  Datang took off in the direction in which she thought Mother-of-Daughters had left, only to find herself swiftly, utterly lost; neither the torch of her three friends nor the rustling motion of the Lady Pema could be heard. She cast about, tryi
ng desperately to orient herself, but only succeeded in losing any shred of direction. She looked up at the night sky, but it was too late; she had not noted the positions of the stars for reference, and in any case, the constellations were occluded by the sky-caressing grass.

  Yet, somehow, she was not at all surprised when Mother-of-Daughters appeared quietly at her side. The lady took Datang’s elbow, and the stalks nearly seemed to part before them, even though they walked side by side. “It is easy to lose oneself in the grass,” said Mother-of-Daughters. “Best to stay with a guide who knows its habits.”

  Datang shook her head. “A queen of the Orchid Palace, but she knows the spirit-ways.”

  “We all have pasts. I should like to taste wine with you some day.”

  Datang shook her head again, this time in contradiction. “Better to enjoy what you find before you, my lady. Unless you can afford the best, connoisseurship is more curse than blessing. I know too many vintners who cannot drink with friends in taverns, and that is a sad way to live.”

  “Not one in which you partake, though,” said Mother-of-Daughters.

  “That is true.”

  “Then perhaps you can preserve me from it.”

  “We may always hope,” said Datang.

  “May we?”

  “Have we ceased to speak of wine, Your Grace?”

  Mother-of-Daughters nodded.

  “We may hope, I think,” said Datang. “Your husband commands the Rigors better than White Tenshing. He has had a lifetime to prepare. White Tenshing only fought the Worm once, and even there he did what no one realized could be done. Who is to say what is possible?”

  Mother-of-Daughters squeezed Datang’s arm gently. “You are kind. I will not force you to speak further on the matter.”

  “May I make an observation?”

  Mother-of-Daughters looked warily at Datang. “I suppose you have earned the right.”

  “If you truly expect your husband to die soon, might it not be best to love him as well as you can, before you lose him?”

  “It would be best,” said Mother-of-Daughters, “of a certainty. I have tried to make myself believe that Tenshing—” She shook her head. “Excuse me, that Netten is simply dying of a disease. Perhaps of some deficient organ. But I cannot forget that he has chosen his doom. That every day he weighs it up against his wife and children and rechooses it.”