by R. F. Kuang
Rin yanked the last cloth knot tight with her teeth and nodded.
Altan turned around, braced his back against the stone door, bent his legs, and pushed. His face strained with the effort.
For a second nothing happened. Then, with a ponderous screech, the rock slid at an angle into its stone bed.
When the rock ground to a halt, Rin and Altan stood before the great maw of darkness. The tunnel was so black inside it seemed to swallow the sunlight whole. Glancing into the dark interior, Rin felt a sense of dread that had nothing to do with the darkness. Inside this mountain, there was no calling the Phoenix. They would have no access to the Pantheon. No way to call the power.
“Last chance to turn back,” said Altan.
She scoffed, handed him a torch, and strode forward.
Rin had barely made it ten feet in when she took one step too wide. The dark passageway turned out to be perilously narrow. She felt something crumble under her foot, and scrambled back against the wall. She held her torch out over the precipice and was immediately overcome with a horrible sense of vertigo. There was no visible bottom to the abyss; it dropped away into nothing.
“It’s hollow all the way down,” said Altan, standing close behind her. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Stick to me. Watch your feet. Chaghan said we’d reach a wider platform in about twenty paces.”
She pressed herself against the cliff wall and let Altan squeeze past her, following him gingerly down the steps.
“What else did Chaghan say?”
“That we would find this.” Altan held out his torch.
A lone pulley lift hung in the middle of the mountain. Rin held her torch out as far as it would go, and the light illuminated something black and shiny on the platform surface.
“That’s oil. This is a lamp,” Rin realized. She drew her arm back.
“Careful,” Altan hissed just as Rin flung her torch out onto the lift.
The ancient oil blazed immediately to life. Fire snaked through the darkness across predetermined oil patterns in a hypnotizing sequence, revealing several similar pulley lamps hanging at various heights. Only after several long minutes was the entire mountain illuminated, revealing an intricate architecture to the stone prison. Below the passageway where they stood, Rin could see circles upon circles of plinths, extending down as far as the light reached. Around and around the inside of the mountain went a spiraling pathway that led to countless stone tombs.
The pattern was oddly familiar. Rin had seen this before.
It was a stone version of the Pantheon in miniature, multiplied in a spiraling helix. It was a perverse Pantheon, for the gods were not alive here but arrested in suspended animation.
Rin felt a sudden burst of panic. She took a deep breath, trying to dispel the feeling, but the overwhelming sense of suffocation only grew.
“I feel it, too,” Altan said quietly. “It’s the mountain. We’ve been sealed off.”
Back in Tikany, Rin had once fallen out of a tree and hit her head so hard against the ground that she lost her hearing temporarily. She’d seen Kesegi shouting at her, gesturing at his throat, but nothing had come through. It was the same here. Something was missing. She had been denied access to something.
She could not imagine what it was like to be trapped here for years, decades upon decades, unable to die but unable to leave the material world. This was a place that did not allow dreaming. This was a place of never-ending nightmares.
What a horrible fate to be entombed here.
Rin’s fingers brushed against something round. Under the pressure of her touch, it shifted and began to turn. She shone her torch on it and signaled for Altan’s attention.
“Look.”
It was a stone cylinder. Rin was reminded of the prayer wheels in front of the pagoda at the Academy. But this cylinder was much larger, rising up to her shoulder. Rin held the torch up to the stone and examined it closely. Deep grooves had been cut into its sides. She placed a hand on one side and dug her heels into the dirt, pushed hard.
With a screech that sounded like a scream, the wheel began to turn.
The grooves were words. No—names. Names upon names, each one followed by a string of numbers. It was a record. A registry of every soul that had been sealed inside the Chuluu Korikh.
There must have been a hundred names carved into that wheel.
Altan held the torch up to her right. “It’s not the only one.”
She looked up and saw that the fire illuminated another record wheel.
Then another. Then another.
They stretched through the entire first tier of the Stone Mountain.
Thousands and thousands of names. Names dating past the reign of the Dragon Emperor. Names dating past the Red Emperor himself.
Rin almost staggered at the significance.
There were people here who had not been conscious since the birth of the Nikara Empire.
“The investiture of the gods,” said Altan. He was trembling. “The sheer power in this mountain . . . no one could stop them, not even the Federation . . .”
And not even us, Rin thought.
If they woke the Chuluu Korikh, they would have an army of madmen, of primordial spigots of psychic energy. This was an army they would not be able to control. This was an army that could raze the world.
Rin traced her fingers against the first record wheel, the one closest to the entrance.
At the top, in very careful, deliberate writing, was the most recent entry.
She recognized that handwriting.
“I found him,” she said.
“Who, the Gatekeeper?” Altan looked confused.
“It’s him,” she said. “Of course it’s him.”
She ran her fingers over the engraved stone, and a deep flood of relief shot through her.
Jiang Ziya.
She had found him, finally found him. Her master was sealed inside one of these plinths. She grabbed the torch back from Altan and started at a run down the steps. Whispers echoed past her as she ran. She thought she could sense things coming through from the other side, the things that had been whispering through the void Jiang summoned at Sinegard.
She felt in the air an overwhelming want.
They must have immured the shamans starting at the bottom of the prison. Jiang could not be far from where they stood. Rin ran faster, felt the stone scrape under her feet. Up before her, her torch illuminated a plinth carved in the image of a stooped gatekeeper. She came to a sudden halt.
This had to be Jiang.
Altan caught up to her. “Don’t just take off like that.”
“He’s here,” she said, shining her torch up at the plinth. “He’s in there.”
“Move,” said Altan.
She had barely stepped out of the way when Altan slammed the end of his trident into the plinth.
When the rubble cleared, Jiang’s serene form was revealed under a layer of crumbling dust. He lay perfectly still against the rock, the sides of his mouth curved faintly upward as if he found something deeply amusing. He might have been sleeping.
He opened his eyes, looked them up and down, and blinked. “You might have knocked first.”
Rin stepped toward him. “Master?”
Jiang tilted his head sideways. “Have you gotten taller?”
“We’re here to rescue you,” said Rin, although the words sounded stupid as soon as she uttered them. No one could have forced Jiang into the mountain. He must have wanted to be there.
But she didn’t care why he had come here; she had found him, she had released him, she had his attention now. “We need your help. Please.”
Jiang stepped forward out of the stone and shook his limbs as if working out the kinks. He brushed the dust meticulously off his robes. Then he uttered mildly, “You should not be here. It’s not your time.”
“You don’t understand—”
“And you do not listen.” He was not smiling anymore. “The Seal is breaking. I can feel it—it�
��s almost gone. If I leave this mountain, all sorts of terrible things will come into your world.”
“So it’s true,” Altan said. “You’re the Gatekeeper.”
Jiang looked irritated. “What did I just say about not listening?”
But Altan was flushed with excitement. “You are the most powerful shaman in Nikara history! You can unlock this entire mountain! You could command this army!”
“That’s your plan?” Jiang gaped at him as if in disbelief that anyone could be this stupid. “Are you mad?”
“We . . .” Altan faltered, then regained his composure. “I’m not—”
Jiang buried his face in his palm, like an exasperated schoolteacher. “The boy wants to set everyone in this mountain free. The boy wants to unleash the contents of the Chuluu Korikh on the world.”
“It’s that, or let Nikan fall,” Altan snapped.
“Then let it.”
“What?”
“You don’t know what the Federation is capable of,” Rin said. “You didn’t see what they did to Golyn Niis.”
“I saw more than you think,” said Jiang. “But this is not the way. This path leads only to darkness.”
“How can there be more darkness?” she screamed in frustration. Her voice echoed off the cavernous walls. “How can things possibly get worse than this? Even you took the risks, you opened the void . . .”
“That was my mistake,” Jiang said regretfully, like a child who had been chastened. “I never should have done that. I should have let them take Sinegard.”
“Don’t you dare,” Rin hissed. “You opened the void, you let the beasts through, and you ran and hid here to let us deal with the consequences. When are you going to stop hiding? When are you going to stop being such a damn coward? What are you running from?”
Jiang looked pained. “It’s easy to be brave. Harder to know when not to fight. I’ve learned that lesson.”
“Master, please . . .”
“If you unleash this on Mugen, you will ensure that this war will continue for generations,” said Jiang. “You will do more than burn entire provinces to the ground. You will rip apart the very fabric of the universe. These are not men entombed in this mountain; these are gods. They will treat the material world as a plaything. They will shape nature according to their will. They will level mountains and redraw rivers. They will turn the mortal world into the same chaotic flow of primal forces that constitutes the Pantheon. But in the Pantheon, the gods are balanced. Life and death, light and dark—each of the sixty-four entities has its opposite. Bring the gods into your world, and that balance will shatter. You will turn your world to ash, and only demons will live in the rubble.”
When Jiang finished speaking, the silence rang heavily in the darkness.
“I can control them,” said Altan, though even to Rin he sounded hesitant, like a boy insisting to himself that he could fly. “There are men in those bodies. The gods can’t run free. I’ve done it with my people. Suni should have been locked up here years ago, but I’ve tamed him, I can talk them back from the madness—”
“You are mad.” Jiang’s voice was almost a whisper, containing as much awe as disbelief. “You’re blinded by your own desire for vengeance. Why are you doing this?” He reached out and grasped Altan’s shoulder. “For the Empire? For love of the country? Which is it, Trengsin? What story have you told yourself?”
“I want to save Nikan,” Altan insisted. He repeated in a strained voice, as if trying to convince himself, “I want to save Nikan.”
“No, you don’t,” said Jiang. “You want to raze Mugen.”
“They’re the same thing!”
“There is a world of difference between them, and the fact that you don’t see that is why you can’t do this. Your patriotism is a farce. You dress up your crusade with moral arguments, when in truth you would let millions die if it means you get your so-called justice. That’s what will happen if you open the Chuluu Korikh, you know,” said Jiang. “It won’t be just Mugen that pays to sate your need for retribution, but anyone unlucky enough to be caught in this storm of insanity. Chaos does not discriminate, Trengsin, and that’s why this prison was designed to never be unlocked.” He sighed. “But of course, you don’t care.”
Altan could not have looked more shocked if Jiang had struck him across the face.
“You have not cared about anything for a very long time,” Jiang continued. He regarded Altan with pity. “You are broken. You’re hardly yourself anymore.”
“I’m trying to save my country,” Altan reiterated hollowly. “And you’re a coward.”
“I am terrified,” Jiang acknowledged. “But only because I’m starting to remember who I once was. Don’t go down that path. Your country is ash. You can’t bring it back with blood.”
Altan gaped at him, unable to respond.
Jiang tilted his head to the side. “Irjah knew, didn’t he?”
Altan blinked rapidly. He looked terrified. “What? Irjah didn’t—Irjah never—”
“Oh, he knew.” Jiang sighed. “He must have known. Daji would have told him—Daji saw what I didn’t, Daji would have made sure Irjah knew how to keep you tame.”
Rin looked between them, confused. The blood had drained from Altan’s face; his features twisted with rage. “How dare you—you dare allege—”
“It’s my fault,” Jiang said. “I should have tried harder to help you.”
Altan’s voice cracked. “I didn’t need to be helped.”
“You needed it more than anything,” Jiang said sadly. “I’m so sorry. I should have fought to save you. You were a scared little boy, and they turned you into a weapon. And now . . . now you’re lost. But not her. She can still be saved. Don’t burn her with yourself.”
They both looked to her then.
Rin glanced between them. So this was her choice. The paths before her were clear. Altan or Jiang. Commander or master. Victory and revenge, or . . . or whatever Jiang had promised her.
But what had he ever promised her? Only wisdom. Only understanding. Enlightenment. But those meant only further warnings, petty excuses to hold her back from exercising a power that she knew she could access . . .
“I taught you better than this.” Jiang put a hand on her shoulder. He sounded as if he were pleading. “Didn’t I? Rin?”
He could have helped them. He could have stopped the massacre at Golyn Niis. He could have saved Nezha.
But Jiang had hidden. His country had needed him, and he had fled to ensconce himself here, without any regard for those he left behind.
He had abandoned her.
He hadn’t even said goodbye.
But Altan . . . Altan had not given up on her.
Altan had verbally abused her and hit her, but he had faith in her power. Altan had only ever wanted to make her stronger.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “But I have my orders.”
Jiang exhaled, and his hand fell away from her shoulder. As always under his gaze, she felt as if she were suffocating, as if he could see through to every part of her. He weighed her with those pale eyes then, and she failed him.
And even though she had made her choice, she couldn’t bear his disappointment. She looked away.
“No, I am sorry,” Jiang said. “I’m so sorry. I tried to warn you.”
He stepped backward over the ruins of his plinth. He closed his eyes.
“Master, please—”
He began to chant. At his feet the broken stone began to move as if liquid, assuming again the form of a smooth, unbroken plinth that built slowly from the ground up.
Rin ran forward. “Master!”
But Jiang was still, silent. Then the stone covered his face completely.
“He’s wrong.”
Altan’s voice trembled, whether from fear or naked rage, she didn’t know. “That isn’t why—I’m not . . . We don’t need him. We’ll wake the others. They’ll fight for me. And you—you’ll fight for me, won’t you? Rin?”
“Wake up,” he shouted, voice cracking. “Wake up, come on . . .”
The shaman in the plinth had to be Feylen, the mad and murderous one. That should have posed a deterrent, but Altan certainly didn’t seem to care as he slammed his trident down again into the thin stone veneer that lay over Feylen’s face.
The rocks came crumbling down, and the second shaman woke.
Rin held her torch out hesitantly. When she saw the figure inside she cringed in revulsion.
Feylen was barely recognizable as human. Jiang had only just immured himself; his body was still passably that of a man, displaying no signs of decay. But Feylen . . . Feylen’s body was a dead one, grayed and hardened after months of entombment without nourishment or oxygen. He had not decayed, but he had petrified.
Blue veins protruded against ash-gray skin. Rin doubted any blood still flowed through those veins.
Feylen’s build was slender, thin and stooped, and his face looked like it might have been pleasant once. But now his skin was pulled taut over his cheekbones, eyes sunken in deep craters in his skull.
And then he opened his eyes, and Rin’s breath hitched in her throat.
Feylen’s eyes glowed brilliantly in the darkness, an unnerving blue like two fragments of the sky.
“It’s me,” Altan said. “Trengsin.” She could hear the way he fought to keep his voice level. “Do you remember me?”
“We remember voices,” Feylen said slowly. His voice was scratchy from months without use; it sounded like a steel blade dragged against the ancient stone of the mountain. He cocked his head at an unnatural angle, as if trying to tip maggots out of his ear. “We remember fire. And we remember you, Trengsin. We remember your hand across our mouth and your other hand at our throat.”
The way Feylen spoke made Rin clench the hilt of her sword with fear. He didn’t speak like a man who had fought by Altan’s side.