Unsouled (Cradle Book 1)

by Will Wight

  The scar at the corner of Jaran’s lip made his scowl sinister instead of stern. “Think beyond yourself. She represents our family in the Festival. Our clan. The Patriarch is negotiating trade rights with the Kazan. The stronger we show ourselves, the better his position. This should be a concern for every Wei.”

  “But that is exactly my concern.” Lindon leaned forward on the edge of his bed, radiating sincerity. “I’ll be fighting among the eight-year-olds. Can you imagine the scorn if I don’t take first place? Anything Kelsa accomplishes against the Irons will be overshadowed by that shame.”

  His father was quiet.

  “Don’t fight,” Seisha said, reaching up and sliding her chalk into her drudge. The floating fish absorbed it without a ripple. “The Foundation stage exhibition is a formality anyway, it’s training for the real fights.”

  Lindon had expected this, and had prepared a counter. “And everyone will know why. I will forever be the Wei clan coward who ran from opponents half his age.”

  Jaran’s frustration had become too much to hold in, and he picked up his cane, spinning it between his palms. “It doesn’t matter! If I break through to Jade, or your mother does, or your sister reaches Iron, then that will wash away anything that happens in the children’s fights.” He slammed the cane down as though the matter were settled.

  Gently, Kelsa shook her head. “It’s a poor gamble. We’re betting on possible honor against certain shame.”

  Those words, certain shame, pricked at him, but he didn’t let the pain touch him. He never did. “Father, Mother, if you tell me it’s likely that you will advance to the Jade stage before the Seven-Year Festival, I’ll give up my claim. I don’t argue that Kelsa needs to be Iron, but she’s so close she doesn’t need the entire thing. I have so little. To a beggar, even scraps become a feast.”

  His mother gave him a wry look, and Jaran’s face had reddened, but neither said anything. They weren’t close to Jade, as he suspected.

  It was Kelsa who finally made the decision. With one clean stroke, she segmented the orus fruit in half, splitting it around the pit. “There’s no honor in denying a man what he’s earned. If you’d like it, Father, I’ll give you my half.”

  Predictably, Jaran grumbled a bit but let her keep it. She walked over to hand her brother his half of the spirit-fruit.

  Kelsa had gotten everything Lindon wanted in his life: the natural gifts, the favor of the clan, and the opportunity to train in sacred arts. And while she was as tall as he was, she didn’t look like she was trying to intimidate anyone. Daily martial training left her lithe and graceful.

  If she wasn’t so absolutely fair about everything, Lindon might have hated her.

  She handed his half of the fruit to him without malice, and even nodded to him in respect. He’d won the argument, and the Wei clan respected honorable victory.

  He allowed the thrill of his prize to run through him as he took the fruit. This could be the first step of his path up. More importantly, he’d won.

  He relished the feeling as he relished the fruit, which tingled on his tongue like a peach charged with lightning. It was gone too soon, and the shock on Kelsa’s face mirrored what he was sure he showed on his own. Even in his stomach, it seemed to give off the occasional shock, sending tingling waves through his body.

  “Could you describe the sensation?” their mother asked, poised to take notes.

  “It definitely feels like it’s working,” Kelsa said.

  Lindon put his hands to his stomach. He imagined he could feel excess energy in his fingertips. “It’s like I’ve swallowed a thunderbolt.”

  Seisha had retrieved a brush and an ink jar to replace her chalk and slate, and painted notes on a scroll as fast as she could move. “Would you describe the feeling as hot or cold?”

  Lindon exchanged looks with his sister. “Hot?” he said, at the same time she said, “Cold?”

  “Alternating hot and cold,” their mother muttered, never pausing in her writing. “Examine your core. Any changes?”

  Lindon closed his eyes, visualizing his core. It sat just beneath the navel, and was where all the lines of madra connected. This was the physical location of the soul, some said, and Lindon always pictured it as a rolling ball of blue-white light.

  He evened out his breathing, inhaling and exhaling in tune with the tides of his spirit. The energy flowed through his body according to his Foundation technique, the one and only sacred art he’d been allowed to learn. It allowed him to focus and purify what little madra he had, to build a foundation for…nothing at all.

  He wasn’t allowed to learn a Path, to harvest vital aura, so he would never advance. If he was lucky, in his later years, his innate spirit would be refined to the point that he would naturally advance to Copper. The state most people reached by age thirteen. Copper spirits were open to the vital aura of the natural world, so they could draw power from the heavens and earth to make themselves stronger. It was the true first step for any sacred arts.

  “No change,” he reported, the review of his lackluster destiny having dampened his excitement.

  “I don’t feel anything either,” Kelsa confirmed. “But there’s something…”

  A shout came from the door. “Wei Shi Lindon, the First Elder requests your presence.” It was a voice Lindon knew, but hadn’t expected to hear again so soon.

  He rose to his feet to answer the door, careful of his numbed arm, but Kelsa moved first. She strode over and pulled the door open.

  Wei Mon Teris stood looking up at her, gawking at her presence. He was still wearing his snowfox skin, scuffed though it was, but otherwise he looked completely unharmed by his encounter with the tree-Remnant only hours before. “Cousin Kelsa, excuse my interruption. Is your brother nearby?”

  By this time, Lindon had slipped into a pair of shoes and made it to his sister’s side. “Cousin Teris, I see you made it back safely.”

  Teris’ jaw clenched. “Wei Shi Lindon. The First Elder requires your presence to review the events of the day. I’m to bring you there immediately.”

  “Carry our family’s regrets to the First Elder,” Kelsa said, “but Lindon is injured. He needs our care and attention tonight, but he would be honored to attend the First Elder at first light tomorrow.”

  Cradling his sling, Lindon ducked under Kelsa’s arm. “How could I make the First Elder wait? My injury is nothing to be concerned over, just a small wound incurred in my battle against the Remnant.”

  Teris glared at the pointed reminder that he hadn’t stayed and fought the monster, as honor dictated he should. In fact, as the strongest party present, Teris should have protected Lindon with his life.

  Not that Lindon had ever expected as much. In his observation, honor often fled before self-preservation.

  “Lead on, Cousin,” Lindon said. Teris started off without another word.

  The First Elder waited for them in the Clan Hall, the same place where young Wei souls were tested. Lindon had rarely seen the elder outside of it, and he seemed to have grown to fit there; his long beard matched the White Foxes on the banners, his robes jade and gold to match the pillars and tiles.

  He stood in the hall as they entered, back straight, his hand on the head of a stone fox and his eyes on the golden statue of the first Wei Patriarch. He did not turn as the young men approached and dropped to their knees, bowing almost to the ground.

  “Tell me what happened today, in the forest beneath Yoma.”

  Teris began immediately, reciting the events of the day as though he’d practiced. To Lindon’s surprise, Teris stuck to an accurate retelling of events, even admitting that he and two friends had tracked a snowfox into the woods. They never actually caught the fox, as he hurried to clarify, and then he went on to tell how Lindon’s presence spooked their game. Lindon’s response angered him, and in his anger, he broke a nearby tree. He had no way of knowing the tree was sacred, and would release a Remnant.

  “With my body, I took a blow that woul
d have struck the Unsouled,” Teris went on, in the furthest departure from truth so far. “When I recovered, I saw that he was defenseless, and I ran to warn my friends rather than die together with him. I do not know how he survived.”

  Silence fell on the Clan Hall, and still the First Elder did not turn. He stroked the fox statue’s head as he thought.

  “What are the words of the Wei clan?” he asked at last.

  “Honor by any means,” the boys recited at once. The Path of the Wei clan used madra of light and dreams to deceive their enemies…but according to the first Wei Patriarch, even deception could be used to serve honor. It was the contradiction around which the Wei clan was founded.

  “There is a time when running to preserve your own life is not cowardice,” the elder went on. “When the threat is so great that your death would mean nothing, then flight is no shame.”

  Teris let out a deep breath.

  “But this was not such a threat,” the First Elder said, turning around at last. His face was carved from stone harder than the statues around him. “If this Remnant failed to defeat an Unsouled at the Foundation stage, then surely a Copper sacred artist could have stood against it. Your stipend will be withheld this month, you will spend a night in isolated meditation, and at the end you will be whipped three times in front of the clan. Cowards have no place in the Valley.”

  Teris bowed so low that his forehead stuck to the floor, so Lindon couldn’t see his face, but his whispered voice was choked. “You are wise and…merciful, First Elder.”

  The First Elder snorted. “Report to your father, tell him what I have said, and that I allow him to add a punishment of his own if he wishes. But if I do not see you through the window of a locked room tonight, then I will make your sentence three times worse. Go now.”

  Teris bowed again and fled without a word.

  Lindon braced himself. Part of him felt a measure of shameful glee at Teris’ sentence, but he couldn’t enjoy it. He knew his clan, he knew his own standing within it, and if the elder had punished an otherwise honorable Copper in front of him, it meant that there was something worse coming.

  The First Elder stood over Lindon, silently judging. Weighing. Perhaps deciding which of several sentences to mete out.

  If Lindon struck first, he might be able to mitigate the damage.

  “This one is shamed to be here before you, Great Elder,” Lindon said into the floor. “This one had no intention of interfering with the Coppers, or their hunt.” Best to bring up the hunt as much as possible, to remind him that Teris and the others had been breaking Elder Whisper’s rules. “This one was in search of an ancestral fruit, on behalf of his mother.”

  With one sharp gesture of his hand, the First Elder motioned for Lindon to get up. He scrambled gratefully to his feet.

  “Did you find it?”

  “Yes, First Elder.”

  The aura around the elder darkened, almost imperceptibly. “Did you waste it on yourself, Unsouled? I know you were tempted.”

  Lindon’s stomach was still buzzing with trapped lightning. It was all he could do not to swallow, afraid the First Elder would take that as a sign of guilt. “It went to my older sister. I mean…this one’s older sister.”

  The intimidating aura dispersed like clouds before the sun, and the First Elder waved irritably. “Speak freely, Shi Lindon. I’ve seen you in here often enough.”

  Lindon fought back a smile. “Yes, First Elder, but I have little to add. Cousin Teris told the story accurately.”

  The First Elder had the longest eyebrows of anyone Lindon had ever seen, and they shot halfway up his forehead at this. “You know what you’ve done wrong, then?”

  That was a trap if Lindon had ever heard one. Sweat trickled down his back, and the lightning in his stomach boiled up. It would be worse luck than he deserved if the fruit made itself known now.

  “I…was…too far from clan territory, First Elder. I know it now. In the future, I will travel in the company of my sister. Thank you for instructing me.”

  The elder sighed, rubbing at his eyes with two fingers. “You found yourself in the way of three Coppers, Lindon. That was your sin.”

  Lindon hesitated. “I am sorry for it, Elder. But I could not have known they would run past this one tree in the forest. Can I predict where lightning will strike in a storm?”

  The First Elder slapped his hand down on the statue of the white fox, sending a sharp crack through the air and leaving a fissure in the fox’s skull. In a blinding flash of madra, he repaired it instantly. “You could not have known? If a party of Kazan dogs had stumbled on you instead, or the honorable disciples of the Fallen Leaf, they could have killed you as easily as Teris broke that tree. Only honor might restrain them, and honor is a poor hook on which to hang a man’s life. And if they did choose to kill you, our clan would have to apologize. For inconveniencing them.”

  Lindon started to respond, but he had nothing to say. Shame blotted out his thoughts, shame that burned worse than the fruit’s lightning, shame that crawled along every inch of his bones and ate him from the inside like a colony of ants.

  The First Elder’s tone softened, but his words didn’t. “If a sacred artist with an iron badge burned down your home with you inside, at most I could give him a punishment like I gave Teris. For the dishonor of picking on the weak. He could not be executed, or maimed, or even fined, because in taking your life he cost the clan nothing.”

  Lindon squeezed his eyes shut and bowed, hoping that would cover the tears he fought down. Weeping like a child would only shame him. He shifted his injured arm in its sling, pretending his wince came from sudden pain.

  “I do not say this to wound you further, Lindon. The heavens can show great cruelty in a man’s birth. But the foundation of any Path is learning to accept the world as it is, not as you wish or even observe it to be. Every slight, every insult, every injustice in your future will be your fault. Your fate is not fair, but it is true. What should you have done today?”

  “I should have returned home as soon as I saw Wei Mon Teris,” Lindon whispered.

  “Wrong! You should never have left.” The First Elder stabbed a finger at him, and it skewered him as thoroughly as a sword. “You have a place in the clan archives. Let that be your turtle’s shell. Help your mother with her work, or stay in the archives, and fade into the background. Humility and anonymity are your protection.” The elder sighed, his shoulders slumping. “They are the only armor I can give you.”

  Tucked away in the corner, on a stand designed for the purpose, waited the testing bowl. Seventeen times, he’d placed his hand in that bowl. Seventeen failures, in a test no one failed.

  He returned his gaze to the floor.

  “Yes, First Elder.”

  The elder sighed again. His slippers moved as he paced back and forth, in a greater display of emotion than Lindon had seen from him before. “I won’t punish you. Your fate, and the injury to your arm, are punishment enough. But if I am seen to do nothing, the Mon family will hold you responsible for Teris. As such, I would like you to feed Elder Whisper tonight.”

  Lindon looked up sharply, a strange hope filling him along with the storm in his belly. “Gratitude, First Elder.”

  The First Elder shook his head. “Maybe he can give you the help that I cannot.”

  ***

  Most buildings in the Wei clan were purple and white, reflecting the purple leaves of the orus tree and the white fur of the snowfox. From a distance, the clan was a collage of those two colors. Only one tower stood out: a needle of white, so tall that it seemed thin, rising above the purple-roofed sea like the mast of a great ship. It had been made of white stone in the age of the clan’s founders, and it was one of the most prominent landmarks in all of Sacred Valley.

  It was filled with stairs.

  There were only two rooms in Whisper’s tower: one at the bottom, and one at the top. In between was nothing more than a spiraling staircase, thousands of steps that represent
ed a monotonous journey to the clan’s oldest ally.

  Lindon took a deep breath as he faced the first step. The founders had obviously designed this tower with sacred artists in mind. And why shouldn’t they? Everyone practiced sacred arts, so everyone had a madra-reinforced constitution greater than their bodies would normally allow.

  Except for Lindon, who had to face this staircase with little more than the strength in his legs. He could cycle his madra to prevent exhaustion, to restore some stamina when his feet began to flag, but he would run out halfway through if he didn’t ration his spiritual strength. A Copper would have the madra to climb these stairs in half the time and arrive in perfect condition.

  Without further hesitation, Lindon began the long march up the stairs. He carried a bucket filled with jade-scaled river carp: Elder Whisper’s twice-daily meal.

  Normally Lindon would never have been chosen for this task. It was easier to ask any Copper-stage artist, and they would finish faster with less effort. Today, Lindon’s eagerness carried him through the hour it took him to reach the top. The First Elder’s words had left him feeling trapped, doomed, cursed to a lifetime of insignificance and weakness.

  If anyone could tell him how to break free, Whisper could.

  Elder Whisper had joined the clan founders to create the Wei clan, dominating the native Remnants to carve out a section of wilderness in Sacred Valley. He had created the Path of the White Fox, the most common Path in the entire clan, and used its powers to control and assimilate several lesser clans. Not even the current Wei Patriarch was as honored as Elder Whisper.

  So when Lindon finally reached the door at the top of the stairs, he set his heavy bucket down and took a moment to catch his breath. He couldn’t appear before Elder Whisper panting like a dog.

  To open the lock, he had to brace it in the crook of his sling-wrapped arm and twist with his free hand. Both the lock and the key were heavy bronze, each bigger than his head. Why they had to use such giant devices to secure Whisper’s door, he couldn’t imagine. They didn’t appear scripted, only heavy. Surely a normal lock and key would work just as well.