by Will Wight
“While the arena is under construction, the staff answer to me,” Seisha said, kneeling to run a finger along his scripted jar. “I asked them to report anyone entering tonight, but I never thought it would be you.”
Lindon was afraid to move, lest it somehow push his mother over the edge from calm to furious. “I'm sorry to have disturbed you, then.”
Seisha stood, flipping brown hair over one shoulder. “You can think of nothing else you've done that might warrant an apology?”
Despite the cool of the night, he broke out in a sudden sweat. He had thought of cover stories depending on who caught him, but none of them would pass his mother.
She looked into the hole with brown eyes, lighter than anyone else in the clan. “Back home, we had a saying. 'The disciple follows the master, but the genius blazes their own trail.' You should cover this up before someone else sees it.”
Lindon wasted a second on astonishment before grabbing his shovel and setting to work. He piled the dirt back in hastily, hoping she wouldn't change her mind. “Mother, are you calling me a genius?”
“Obviously not. It's just a saying.” He couldn't deny a moment of disappointment before his mother continued. “Nonetheless, I’m proud of you.”
The shovel felt light in his hands as his mother's words danced through his mind, so it wasn't until he'd worked in silence for minutes more that he thought to ask a question. “Who were you expecting?”
She gave him a wry glance. Because he knew her, he knew what it meant: she had hoped he wouldn't ask that question. But Wei Shi Seisha would answer it anyway, because she believed that curiosity should always be rewarded. “Have you heard any rumors about the Li clan recently?”
The First Elder had said they were too quiet, suspiciously so, but Lindon suspected he wasn't supposed to have that information. He shook his head.
“Three months ago, they purchased an unusual item from an auction. A fragment of a stone tablet dating back thousands of years, supposedly found at the base of the Nethergate. It was covered in runes that may have had some...unique properties. But no one could ever prove it.”
“What sort of properties?” Lindon asked, leaning on his shovel.
“It looked like half of a script intended for direct spatial transportation. The stuff of myths. Walk into one circle and emerge in another one a world away, stories like that. I examined the tablet myself, before the Li clan bought it, and I could not confirm it.”
Still, Lindon's imagination burned with the possibilities. That really was the stuff of legends.
“Since they bought the tablet, we haven't heard much from them at all, but we've started to receive reports that they've been hunting specific Remnants. A rabbit that crosses yards in the blink of an eye. A bat that can vanish into nothing. A mole that burrows through thin air. We believe they're trying to condense spatial madra.”
Spatial madra. It sounded ridiculous. “Apologies, Mother, but how could that be? How could madra take on the form of space?”
She pointed at him, and he knew he'd struck the heart of the matter. “It can't. Madra can imitate anything from fire to dreams, and we call those forms ‘aspects.’ Obviously, to speak of space having a form is absurd. They are actually seeking to pierce and control space using madra, which should be impossible.”
But there had to be more to the story, or his mother wouldn't be so uneasy. “Then the Li clan is wasting their time. And their money.”
“I've worked with some of the Li Soulsmiths, who would be leading any project involving Remnants. They're underhanded and some of their theories are suspect, but they wouldn't commit clan resources to a project unless they had reason to believe it could succeed. That is what scares me. Everything I've heard leads me to believe that they're investing everything into a fool's dream, so they've either gone insane...or they know something we don't.”
Lindon shivered even as he finished filling in the whole he'd dug beneath the stage, patting the soil down so that it fell flush with the stone block. If the Li clan did try something during the Festival, it reassured him that he at least had one hidden weapon.
Seisha held a glowing blue stick of Forged madra up for her drudge's inspection, and it ran segmented legs over the stick before whistling in response. She noted something down on her notepad. After only a few minutes, she'd already moved on to her next project. “If you've finished, we should leave the arena. It won't be long before someone asks what we've been doing here, and the shovel will be hard to explain.”
On their way out, Lindon asked a question that had unnerved him as soon as he'd thought of it. “Will the Li clan try something during the Festival?”
“Undoubtedly they will,” she said, deep in her notebook. When he responded with uneasy silence, she elaborated. “The clans always try something during the Seven-Year Festival, because it's the best time to strive against one another. They'll propose 'sure' bets, or try to rig trading agreements. Nothing unusual. As for our earlier discussion—” They were walking past a guard, who nodded to them as they left. “—I suspect it will take them years before they have anything functional. Real research takes generations to perfect.”
“Then why were you expecting them tonight?”
She gave him a wry smile. “Because I try to expect the worst.”
***
Information requested: the Seven-Year Festival.
Beginning report…
Every seven years, the clans of Sacred Valley hold a festival.
While the original purpose of this gathering was to promote unity, it has become the primary stage on which they compete. The children of the clan are taught to identify the others by their clothes—armor and a red sash for the Kazan, with their banners bearing three stone dogs; a white fox with five tails for the Wei, who always match white with purple; and the Li, who wear too much jewelry and carry banners bearing the Snake and the Tree.
These are your enemies, the children are told. One day, our clan will be strong, and we will crush the other two under our heels.
It has been this way for a hundred generations.
The Wei clan hosts the Festival this year, so outside craftsmen have inhabited clan grounds for months. They build booths of orus wood, dig trenches, paint houses, smooth roads, and generally prepare the clan for an influx of rivals. The Wei are never so clean, organized, and well-presented as in the days leading up to the Seven-Year Festival.
The outsider craftsmen are confined to temporary housing around their projects, and are kept to a strict curfew. Most don't mind. Beyond clan territory, Sacred Valley is still wild, and they are accustomed to the ravages of weather and wild Remnants. Living in the security of a community is a luxury most cannot afford for long.
When the booths are arranged, the White Fox banners flying from the tallest homes, and the arena prepared, the clan is ready. The outsiders are paid and sent away as the other clans begin to arrive.
The Kazan announce their arrival with a host of trumpets when they are still miles away, and the ground rumbles under the impact of their advancing army. When banners flying the Stone Dogs are visible in the distance, streams of red flowing in the wind, the least dignified of the Wei gather to catch a glimpse of their visiting enemies. Most only see a Kazan clansman every seven years.
Every man, woman, and child of the Kazan wears armor, even where it could not possibly grant any protection. Women wear shadesilk dresses with a sleeve of delicately wrought mail, or plates sewn into the bodice. Men wear helmets over red robes, or wrap themselves in loose-fitting cloth with thick belts of iron and leather. Children carry shields, or run around in tiny breastplates.
All of the Kazan wear badges, of course, but these are seemingly crafted with perfection in mind as well; they are four or five times bigger than those of the Wei clan, so that the adults wear plates of copper or iron over their entire chests.
Even the mounts they ride, for those rich or important enough to afford mounts, are armored. They are stone dogs the size o
f horses, Forged constructs created by Soulsmiths, and every step of every paw strikes the earth like a drumstick. The bulkiest of these craghounds, as they are called, drag wagons behind them—wagons laden with the goods of Mount Venture. Halfsilver ingots, sky-iron statuettes, and goldsteel blades flash in the sun, delighting the eyes of the Wei children.
The families of the White Fox mock the incoming Kazan for their blunt ways, for their lack of subtlety, for their obvious stupidity. The Wei clan will rule their lands soon, as it once was, and as it is meant to be again.
The Li clan is too sophisticated for trumpets. They unleash Remnants to fly around their heads as they approach, swift jade hawks and shining silver butterflies and twin-headed crimson eagles, all trailing lines of vivid color behind them in the sky. The display is a delicate tapestry woven among the clouds, accompanied by music from the most accomplished Li performers. Flutes and stringed instruments drift in sweet tones around the Remnants' dance, leading some Wei children to laugh in delight. They will be reprimanded by their parents later.
There are no wagons visible among the Li at first, as their mounts and cargo will be taking up the rear. They will present nothing unsightly to their enemies. Those of the Jade stage march in the first rank, their badges displayed proudly among necklaces of gold and silver. Those most honored in the Li clan are also the most bedecked in jewels, with Jade elders wearing five rings in each ear and two on each finger.
The ranks of Iron and Copper follow Jade, though only the best of each stage are represented here. Those who have stagnated at their level for too long are miles behind, with the pack animals and the children, to arrive with no fanfare and no apparent connection to those who have gone before.
Each Copper carries a tall wooden branch, unpolished and uncarved. At the height of this branch is a green banner. When the Coppers raise their branches together, it is as though they march in the center of a forest, with leaves blowing over their heads. A few of the most outstanding Coppers have snakes carved into their branches, as the Tree and the Serpent are the symbols of the Li clan.
Mothers and fathers of the Wei families lean over their children, pointing out the ostentatious jewelry, which flash in the gleaming Remnant rainbow overhead. This is vanity, pride, and arrogance. Only the truly strong deserve to be arrogant, and the Li clansmen think too much of themselves. With such displays, they will someday provoke a power much greater than their own, and that will be their downfall.
At the same time and in the same voices, the Li and the Kazan mock the Wei in their own ways, and for their own reasons. Such is as it has been for a hundred generations.
For all its talk of humility, the Wei clan will not lose to its guests. And masters of illusion are, after all, masters of presentation.
The gates of the Wei clan—newly constructed for the occasion, and carved with purple flowers and white foxes—peel open under the strength of invisible chains. The Li display is put to shame when the sky explodes in sound and color, foxfire popping in purple flares and raining down among the visitors in a million harmless sparks. A legion of phantom snowfoxes wait on their haunches, lined up along the street of the clan as the Li and the Kazan enter. The eyes of the foxes follow each stranger, even as illusionary cheers fill the atmosphere. Flower petals of pink and white and purple spin on the wind, and sweet scents fall from the sky as though the air itself has been perfumed.
The Wei swell with pride as they watch this coordinated masterpiece of White Fox madra, and the elders—their conductors—nod to each other in satisfaction. They have outdone their rivals in hospitality, welcoming them in a fashion appropriate for receiving an imperial procession.
In their minds, this is more than their enemies deserve.
Suggested topic: the fate of the current Seven-Year Festival. Continue?
Denied, report complete.
Chapter 9
All the important events of the Seven-Year Festival were to take place later, once the esteemed guests had settled in. It would take several days for everyone to arrive from all over Sacred Valley, and the Wei clan wanted as broad an audience as possible.
But the Foundation fights were scheduled for the first day.
Lindon understood why. These were children, after all; while each clan would still try to make sure its children were the best trained in the sacred arts, there was nothing at stake beyond pride. When a clan revealed a new talent at the Iron level, then they were displaying a new military power. Likewise, Coppers were the future of the clan. Showing weakness before rivals could be a clan's death sentence.
As for the Foundation stage, unless a boy or girl revealed a truly extraordinary genius talent, these fights existed only to give the children experience. A victory would gain face for the clan, but nothing remarkable.
Lindon reminded himself of this to keep from vomiting all over his white training robes. His wooden badge seemed to burn on his chest as he waited on the bench with the other Foundation-level Wei fighters. The seats that he'd seen empty a few nights before now roared with life as sacred artists from all over the Valley gathered.
Besides him, the oldest person on the bench was a twelve-year-old girl from the Chen family. Three years younger than he was, and already on the verge of breaking through to Copper.
The arena spread before him, a huge square of pale stone, but now it looked as vast as a field of snow. If he failed, everyone would see it. Not just those in the Wei clan, who already knew about their Unsouled, but the Li and the Kazan as well. They would see what a shame the Wei had produced.
He looked up to the corner of the arena, where a five-tailed snowfox curled up on a pillar. It opened its eyes as though sensing his attention, staring at him with a gaze of absolute black.
Elder Whisper and his mother had both told him to move forward. He couldn't be a coward now.
Even if he felt like one.
A powerfully built man in elaborate purple-and-gold shadesilk glided past the bench, his thick beard blending in with his wild hair until he looked like a silver lion. He winked at the children, ignoring Lindon, his jade scepter badge hanging over the White Fox emblem on his chest.
Wei Jin Sairus, the Wei Patriarch, rarely involved himself in the day-to-day workings of the clan. The elders handled such mundane matters. He was the idol for the younger generations to follow, the sacred artist fixated entirely on his Path, seeking power to the exclusion of all else. When he did emerge from seclusion, it was usually to battle a powerful Remnant, seek out rumors of a newfound treasure, or directly threaten a rival clan. He personally represented a significant fraction of the Wei clan's strength.
Wei Jin Amon, the Patriarch's blood grandson, followed at a respectful distance behind. He was dressed in white, an iron badge hanging from his neck though he was only seventeen, and he carried a spear wrapped in shimmering green shadesilk. His hair was long and thick, tied back until it flowed behind him like a black river, and some of the less flattering rumors said he spent as much time caring for his hair as he did practicing his sacred arts. His gaze did land on Lindon, cold and calculating, but passed by in a breath.
The hammering of Lindon's heart redoubled. The Foundation fights weren't important, but now the Patriarch and his grandson—a future disciple of the vaunted Heaven’s Glory School—were both here to witness. What was happening? Surely they had something more important to be doing besides watching Lindon try to beat up ten-year-olds.
Seconds later, he had his answer, but it was no comfort. Rather than joining the Wei section and sitting among their family, Sairus and Amon greeted some of the elders and moved on. They walked over to the stairway leading up to the box reserved for visitors from the four Schools.
And Lindon realized there were people up there. Actual School disciples, the elites of Sacred Valley, there to see him fail.
Now that he was watching, he could pick them out. A young woman with purple robes and a crown of ivy represented the Fallen Leaf. The boy wrapped in white and gold, seemingly even
younger than Lindon, would be there for the Heaven's Glory School. The man for the Golden Sword wore plates of iron sewn onto his clothes, and his goldsteel sheath gleamed. That left the old woman in gray to represent the Holy Wind, and as far as Lindon could tell, she was absolutely ordinary.
He turned around and heaved, spewing his breakfast all over the ground behind the bench.
The three clans didn't account for the entire population of Sacred Valley—far from it—but they ruled by virtue of superiority in the sacred arts. Those who followed the Path of the White Fox were stronger and better-trained than those wild practitioners without the support of a large family, and the Wei could afford to produce elixirs that the most powerful sacred artists needed to advance.
The four Schools were on another level entirely.
They focused completely on the sacred arts, to the exclusion of all else, and their disciples were selected from among the best of the clans. Wei, Li, or Kazan...it didn't matter, so long as the disciple was promising enough, and wasn't so old that they couldn't still switch Paths. It was said that any Jade expert from the Schools was on par with the Patriarch of a clan, and each School had enough Jades to tear every Wei to pieces.
A School disciple would be well within his rights to strike an ordinary clansman down with no explanation. If Lindon's fight offended the senses of the honored guests overhead, they could kill him from where they sat. The Patriarch would more than likely apologize for wasting their time.
A hand rested on his shoulder, and Lindon turned to see his father, face twisted in disgust. “Wipe your mouth,” he said. “We can't have the Kazan seeing you like this.”
Lindon hurriedly swiped at his lips with the back of his sleeve. “Apologies, Father. I did not realize the esteemed guests from the Schools would be in attendance today.”
“Ah, well, best not to shame us then. Though there are worse things than a clean death.”