by Will Wight
Lindon nodded to show her that he'd taken the message, but in truth it wasn't terribly strange. The notion of honor in Sacred Valley was similar, if perhaps a little less aggressive. As the saying went, “A man holds grudges for a day, a family for a year, and a clan for a lifetime.”
Jai Sen chuckled even as he nudged a passerby aside with the butt of his spear. “Well said. It becomes a delicate dance, walking among people with such fragile pride. You and your family must make sure that you stand as tall as possible, so your enemies are too wary of you to bother you. But a tree that grows too tall, too quickly, is liable to be cut down.” He turned enough to include Lindon in his grin. “The wisest course is to join a clan with such a firm foundation that it can never be shaken, with an unassailable reputation and untarnished honor.”
Lindon might have been new to the area, but he could take obvious hints. “Would the Jai clan welcome strangers?”
Jai Sen stabbed a finger at him. “This one is almost as wise as you are, though perhaps he has...lagged a bit on his Path. Indeed, there is no faction in the Wilds as strong or as proud as the Jai clan. Our branch here is comparable to the Purelake Temple in influence, and it is but a fraction the size of our main branch in the Blackflame Empire. As an honored guest under the banner of Jai, none of the Sandvipers would dare to disrespect you again. We would give you the treatment of an outer disciple, which you surely deserve, and any honors or merits you render to the clan will be exchanged fairly for scales or treasures of your choosing. And when we recover the spear, as it was ours to begin with, every member of the clan and our respected guests will all receive a hundred scales as a bonus. We would even feed and house Wei Shi Lindon, as a courtesy to you.”
Lindon was full to bursting with questions, in contrast to Yerin, who looked as though Jai Sen had offered her a pile of mud and a filthy stick. He had intended to ask about the factions of the Wilds, then about 'scales,' which he assumed were some sort of currency, but all his other concerns were pushed from his mind at the mention of the spear.
He stepped between Yerin and Jai Sen, catching the man's attention. “Your pardon, Jai Sen, but we have traveled from far away.” He hadn't planned to keep Sacred Valley a secret, but Yerin had stopped him from revealing it earlier, so he steered toward caution. “We came upon this land by chance, so we know nothing of the spear.”
Jai Sen, who at first had seemed irritated at Lindon's interruption, brightened. He waited until a cart had rattled by, deafening with a sound like clattering pottery, before he spoke. “The spear is the prize of the Transcendent Ruins. The Ruins are a treasure in themselves, drawing vital aura from hundreds of miles around, and filled with ancient secrets of great power. But the one everyone seeks, the weapon that could elevate one faction to the heavens, is the spear.”
He was warming up now, gesturing with his hands so that his own spear bobbed wildly and caused several bystanders to duck and curse him. He continued as though he hadn't heard them. “Almost a thousand years ago, the Desolate Wilds were totally lawless, plagued by beasts and by wild sacred artists no better than animals themselves. Each man considered himself an Emperor, each woman an Empress, and they ruled whatever they could take at the end of a blade. But one day,” and here Jai Sen drew himself up proudly, “a woman emerged from nowhere with a shining spear in her hands. She united these rogue sacred artists under one name, killing those who resisted, and spreading law and civilization across the Wilds. No one could stand against them, because no one could oppose her...or rather, no one could oppose her spear.”
He smiled wider, because even Yerin was listening with obvious interest. “You see, her weapon was said to devour spirits. When she destroyed a Remnant, she consumed its power, until she grew so strong that she could slay entire armies at a stroke. For the next two centuries, while she lived, all the Wilds remained peaceful under her rule.”
He waved a hand as though brushing aside two hundred years.
“The story of her death is a long one, but it's enough to say that the Ruins rose on the day of her death. She entered, taking the spear, and never emerged. Some say that she received the spear from the Ruins in the beginning, and she was only returning the power she had borrowed. I believe that it was a test, that she locked her strongest weapon into a secure vault to safeguard her legacy until a descendant could claim it once again.”
“Will you retrieve it yourself?” Lindon asked. Though it was clear that Jai Sen wasn't the most powerful young sacred artist in the Jai clan—no matter how different the outside world was from Sacred Valley, he wouldn't believe that any clan would send its elites out to guard the gate from dogs—but a little flattery could only help him.
Jai Sen clapped Lindon on the back so hard that Lindon thought he would bruise. “You sure know how to speak. I should keep you around just for that. But I know my place; I'm only here to bring some small glory to my clan, as much as I am capable.” He smiled over at Yerin, and Lindon wondered how much glory an esteemed visitor was worth to the Jai clan.
The tall spearman drew up short next to a cube of gray stone blocks very similar to the ones he'd seen the girl cutting barehanded. They were stacked one on top of the other, bound without mortar until they formed a square house bigger than the entire Shi family complex. Horses and stranger animals filled a fenced area nearby, and men and women with the spears and robes of the Jai clan entered and exited freely.
“This is the Inn of the Drifting Light, an establishment that sprouts up whenever and wherever promising members of the Jai clan need a place to stay.” Jai Sen presented the enormous stone cube with a proud flourish. “As my friend, you are welcome to a room inside. Humble as it may be, I guarantee you won't find better anywhere in the Alliance.”
Yerin gave Jai Sen a shallow bow. “I regret that my exhaustion prevents me from thanking you properly,” she said, in the most formal sentence Lindon had ever heard from her. “I owe you a debt for every favor you've done on my behalf.”
“Not at all, Yerin, not at all. There is no need for such formality between us, not when we will soon work side by side.” He ushered them into the wide, doorless entrance, where a matronly woman had taken up a seat behind a wooden table.
She raised eyebrows when she saw him. “Jai Sen, have they closed the gates already?”
He cleared his throat. “Honored aunt, this is Yerin of no clan. I greeted her arriving at the gate, and she expressed an interest in working alongside our clan during her stay here. She is a guest of mine, and her friend is under her protection.”
The woman appraised Yerin for a moment before giving her a broad smile. “I hope that my nephew hasn't worn out your ears on the way. Finding you shows more insight than I would have expected from him, and it's a credit to your wisdom that you accepted. You have a bright future here, with you so young.”
To Lindon, she said nothing.
Clearly pleased with himself, Jai Sen swept his spear out to the side as he bowed to the room in general. “Aunt, honored guest, I am sorry to be so rude as to leave, but they need my presence at the wall. Sister Yerin, I hope that we might share a meal at sunset tonight, once you have a chance to refresh yourself and to rest.”
Yerin bowed to him in response. “I'm sure I'll have a mouthful of questions once I've wet my throat a little more.”
Jai Sen laughed. “More water for the thirsty travelers!” he said to his aunt. “And a bath, if I may be so indelicate as to suggest it.” The woman nodded firmly and scribbled some words on a tablet.
“Then I'm off!” Jai Sen announced, spinning on his heel—almost catching Lindon in the head with the shaft of the spear—and walking out the door.
As Lindon had expected, a room in the inn was a hollowed-out stone block the size of a closet. A bed stood against one wall and a pile of blankets against the other—Lindon assumed that was for him—with a tiny table crammed into the corner balancing an unlit lamp, a paper covering what he guessed was a bowl of food, and four bottles of water beaded wi
th condensation. As soon as they opened the door, Lindon and Yerin didn't even bother dropping their belongings before they darted for the water. The Thousand-Mile Cloud hovered in the hallway like a lonely puppy.
The woman at the entrance had told them baths would be heated within the hour, so once Lindon had finally slaked his thirst and devoured a bowl of rice, he started flipping through his pack for a clean change of clothing. The ones he was wearing were more appropriate for the fireplace than the wardrobe, after so many days in the wilderness, and in the tight confines of the room he was starting to notice the smell. His longing for the bath sharpened, until it was almost as powerful as his thirst had been earlier.
Yerin, meanwhile, was looking at the square hole in the wall that served as their window. “Think you could squeeze through this?” she asked.
Lindon looked up with his hands full of clean clothes. “The window?”
“If we get caught because your shoulders are stuck and you're dangling half out of the wall, I can tell you I won't be smiling.”
“You want to leave?”
She lifted her sheathed sword, placing it across his shoulders as though taking a measurement. “I'm not staying here, you can take that for true.”
Just when he'd been looking forward to a bath and a bed, even curled up on a stone floor. “May I ask why?”
“If Jai Sen mistook us for Remnant, he's dumber than a sack full of hammers. He wanted to know if I had a sharp enough edge on me to take his attack, and if I didn't, he planned on looting our corpses clean.”
Slowly, Lindon replaced his clothes into the pack. “How do you know?”
“See something enough times, and you start looking for it. Unspoken rule of the world: you kill the last person to own something, it’s yours, and nobody asks too many questions. That's not where it ends, either. He insulted you to see if I'd take it, because the farther I'll bend, the farther he can push me. Those Sandvipers at the gate were supposed to be his friends, his allies, however you want to say it. But he didn't stop them when they were going to make trouble, or stop me from beating on them. That sound friendly to you?”
Lindon had noticed that, but he'd taken it in stride. That was how many in the Wei clan had treated an Unsouled, after all.
“Now he's taken us to a place where we're stoppered up like flies in a wine bottle. Don't know if he still wants to rob us, or kill us, or maybe just what he said: get us working for the Jai clan. But I'll dance to his tune when he makes a puppet out of my corpse, and not a second before. We're leaving.”
She held up her sword to the window horizontally, considered a moment, then nodded. “You first. I’ll push.”
Chapter 6
The Sandvipers had their own corner of the Five Factions Alliance territory. The space wasn't assigned to them according to some plan or design, as would have been rational, but instead consisted of all the ground they could seize and hold. Typical of sacred artists, in Jai Long's opinion: so consumed with gaining strength that they never considered how they should use it.
Most of the Sandviper territory was taken up by a single, garishly red tent of many peaks. While the lesser minions settled for huts made of twigs and scavenged boards, their future chief reveled in luxury. Sounds floated out of the tent on a warm wind—mingled laughter, the clink of glasses, splashing of water.
Jai Long could have joined them. He had the status, and he'd contributed more merits than the Sandviper heir. But if he was honest with himself, he preferred it out in the cold night.
He sat at a rough table arranged on the mud, a stretch of fabric above him guarding from rain and providing shade. It was hot here when the sun was high, and cold when it wasn't, but his personal comfort was secondary. This position allowed him to focus on his duties, placed him in the way of any attack on the tent, and kept him close enough to respond to any of Kral's whims.
No sooner had Jai Long thought of the name when his master stuck his head out from the tent. Kral was twenty-two years old, and fit from years of martial training. He always gave the impression of an imposing leader, standing tall and confident as though to inspire those around him, gaze fixed on some distant vision of victory...until he smiled. Then, he looked like a rogue trying to charm his way out of trouble.
He was smiling now.
Water ran down his body, and black hair plastered to his face and neck. Even the towel wrapped around his waist was soaked.
“Send for some more water, would you?” Kral asked. The Sandvipers called Kral the young chief, though he hadn't ascended to his father's title yet, because of the great influence he had among the sect. He was issuing a command, but he respected Jai Long enough to at least pretend it was a request. “Somehow we keep losing it.” A chorus of laughter followed that statement from within the tent, and his grin broadened.
Jai Long nodded to a pair of nearby servants, young boys born into the Sandviper sect, and they ran off at his signal to find the jars of water he'd ordered filled earlier. There were constructs in the tent to heat what water they brought, but if there existed any constructs that could create water out of madra, only the Purelake might have Soulsmiths skilled enough to build them. Maybe the Fishers, but he couldn't have any dealings with the Sandvipers' ancestral enemy. Not openly, anyway.
Request fulfilled, Jai Long turned back to his work, expecting that Kral would leave. Instead, the heir sighed.
“You're not a slave,” he said.
Jai Long turned back, somewhat surprised at the statement. “If I thought I was, I wouldn't stay.” He and Kral had reached the same stage of advancement in the sacred arts, but the future chief wouldn't be able to stop him by force. Jai Long wasn't arrogant enough to assume that he was the strongest Highgold in the Five Factions Alliance, but he was certainly the best among the Sandvipers.
If he'd thought the sect was treating him unfairly, he would have cut his way through them, and Kral knew it. The only one that could have overpowered him was the current chief, a Truegold, and Kral's father was out hunting.
Kral nodded to the paperwork. “Then why are you working like one? Come join us.” He peeled the tent flap back a little, and another humid gust bloomed in the night air.
No laughter accompanied this statement from inside the tent, but none of them argued. Kral's friends were afraid of seeming too displeased, but they certainly weren't eager to have Jai Long join them.
He resisted lifting a hand to feel the strips of cloth wrapped around his head. The cloth was red, wrapped so tightly around him that not a hair or scrap of skin was visible from the neck up. Only his eyes peeked out of the middle, and if he could have covered those up without losing his vision, he would have.
“Let's not inflict my company upon them,” Jai Long said dryly. “They're having fun.”
If Kral's companions could have cheered that statement without losing face, Jai Long was sure they would have.
Kral's smile sharpened. “They won't say a word about it, that I can promise you. They know the hand that feeds them.”
They wouldn't need words to express their displeasure, Jai Long knew. No one did, really. When he'd returned to his family with his sister's bloody and broken body in his arms, his parents were more horrified by his face than by the fate of their daughter. What have you done to yourself? they didn't ask him. Was it worth it? they didn't say.
When the Jai Patriarch banished him to the Wilds, the words were hollow and empty, forms without substance. The old man's disappointment oozed across the room, so tangible that it might as well have been vital aura taken form. The star that would have guided the clan into the future had stepped off the Path, ruining his future advancement. And he was hideous...how could he represent the Jai like that?
Nothing truly important needed to be said. When he returned to the clan, unseated the Patriarch, and forced the rest of the family to bow before him, he wouldn't need any speeches either. Above all else, sacred artists respected strength.
Jai Long intended to use his.
“Can you imagine me saying yes?” he asked Kral, and the young chief gave a bitter laugh.
“In truth, no. But what sort of host would I be if I didn't ask?”
Kral had his faults. He pursued sacred arts with admirable dedication, but at every other sort of work he balked. He was lazy, irritable, quick to anger, slow to apologize, arrogant, and even occasionally cruel.
But he'd treated Jai Long well, and it would not be forgotten.
Jai Long said none of this, because he didn't need to. He waved his hand. “You're letting out the heat. Call for me when you need more wine.”
Kral sighed again, but headed back inside. The laughs started up again almost immediately.
Jai Long looked down at the papers beneath him, conjuring a tiny star on the tip of one finger so that he had enough light to see. Four piles of papers sat on the desk, divided roughly into quadrants. Each page was a map. The maps were rough, sketched by many different hands, and incomplete. Jai Long was making notes of his own on the many blank spaces, filling in from other maps and from his own inferences, slowly and steadily building a complete diagram.
There were still many riddles to solve, but he could feel the information gathering into a whole. In another week, maybe two, he'd have an advantage beyond any of the other Five Factions: a map of the Transcendent Ruins.
The stories passed down about the ancient Jai spear were more myth than fact, but two things remained true to a reasonable degree of certainty. For one thing, it was almost absolutely true that the spear remained somewhere in the Ruins. There were hundreds of eyewitnesses to the Jai Matriarch's entrance, and while popular stories said she'd died within, her closest advisors recorded that she emerged from the Ruins weak and battered. She told those advisors that she'd left the spear within, and died days afterward.
He had enough information to consider that story true. But there was a second fact he'd verified, and it was equally important: the spear really had devoured the strength of Remnants and added their strength to that of the Matriarch's. One of her advisors had observed the process, even noting down possible methods and some runes on the spear's shaft that might have been some form of script. The early Jai clan had tried to reproduce the spear, but had ultimately failed.