by Will Wight
“These Clearblood pills are refined from a unique blend of herbs grown only here on the mountain,” Anses said, in a tone that suggested he’d given this speech many times. “They will remove impurities from your core and from your blood, increasing the speed of your cycling and preparing you to advance to the next stage. Take one and cycle it for at least three days before taking the second, although you may wish to save the second until you are attempting to advance.”
He pointed to the pear. “The spirit-fruits we give to disciples are different depending on the year’s harvest, but you’re exceptionally lucky this year. One of our elders happened to find a thousand-year dawnfruit tree just on the other side of the mountain. The dawnfruit has absorbed the vital aura of heaven and earth for centuries, and it will nourish your soul directly. I recommend you wait until completely digesting at least one Clearblood pill before eating the fruit.”
After hearing those descriptions, Lindon slid the box out of the elder’s grip before Anses had quite released it. He slid the lid closed, cradling the box like an infant. The only thing he wanted to do was run back to his room and cycle, especially before Deret came hunting for him, but he had one question first. “An elder found this outside the valley? He actually left Sacred Valley?”
Elder Anses grimaced. “I forgot myself. We try not to speak of the outside world to disciples until they’re ready. You’ve heard that the land around Sacred Valley is all wild and untamed?”
Lindon nodded.
“But have you also heard that there are people living outside?”
“I have.” His clan had sold crates of orus fruits to the Fallen Leaf School for generations, and always they were told that the fruit was a delicacy to the people outside the valley. As a child, Lindon had never thought particularly hard about how people living in a forsaken wilderness could afford to buy sweet delicacies.
“Then you’re better informed than most,” Anses said. “Many families don’t tell their children that there’s anything beyond the mountains. And for good reason.” He rolled up his sleeve, revealing an arm that had been absolutely mangled. Huge chunks of flesh were missing from the forearm, so that Lindon could see tendons and bone pressing directly underneath the skin. The upper arm, just under the shoulder, had been shredded by what looked like three claws.
It had clearly happened years ago, as the skin had grown back and the man’s hand was in perfect working condition, but the shock of the sight was a slap in Lindon’s face.
Unperturbed, the elder slowly rolled his sleeve back down. “I’ve been outside Sacred Valley for a total of six hours. I was lucky not to lose an arm. The man who discovered the goldfruit tree disappeared after returning four baskets of fruit to the school. He said he was checking the tree one more time, and he never came back.”
“People live out there?” Lindon asked in a hushed whisper. If it wasn’t safe for a Jade, how could anyone raise children?
“Only nomads,” he said dismissively. “Barbarians. They have tamed some sacred beasts, and they roam around in caravans avoiding the greatest dangers. They’re hardly better than Remnants themselves, acting according to their base instincts with no civilization to speak of. Only savages can live in such a savage land, while culture flourishes here.” He gave Lindon a fatherly smile. “Be grateful for what you have. I expect you to work hard, use those resources well, and advance to Copper before Sun Day.”
As Lindon left the Outer Disciple Hall, his imagination swam with thoughts of barbarian nomads and their tame sacred beasts, living in a land so harsh that the Jade elder of a powerful sacred arts school could only survive for hours. He imagined wilderness stretching on to the end of the world…
That may have been what the Heaven’s Glory School believed, but he knew better. Suriel had shown him palaces the size of the whole valley, vast courts, paved roads and rugged taverns. Civilization had taken root somewhere else, not just here. And he’d be the first person from Sacred Valley to see it.
Yerin and the Sword Sage had come in to the valley from the outside, after all. With her guiding him, why couldn’t he make it?
He pictured a savage beast, all teeth and gleaming claws, leaping out of dark trees and shredding his arm until it looked like Elder Anses’. If he thought about that too long he’d lose his courage, so he focused on the elixirs in his arms instead.
Under the dawn light, he made his way back to his room with dreams of Copper filling his head. These pills were the sort of medicine that the Wei clan had never been able to afford, and the spirit-fruit was beyond anything he’d ever heard of. A thousand years’ worth of vital aura? And they had so many they could afford to give some to disciples? The ancestral orus fruit would be nothing next to this.
He had the box tucked under one arm and one hand on his door when something smashed into the side of his chin.
Pain flowered in his head as though his jaw had cracked, swallowing his vision. The box tumbled open, sending the blue-and-white pills spilling onto the ground. Weakly he reached out a hand for them. They were far too valuable to let them get dirty.
A hand reached down past him, plucking both pills from the ground. It gathered up the box as well, which still contained the goldfruit, and lifted them all out of Lindon’s vision.
Those are mine, Lindon tried to say, but his jaw felt as though someone had stuffed it with live coals. Through watery eyes, he squinted into the dawn-lit sky.
Kazan Ma Deret loomed over him, brown hair hanging down into his eyes, iron badge heavy and black against his chest. Before he spoke a word, Deret lashed out with a foot.
Lindon curled up in instinctive reaction, but the kick still landed, slamming into his ribs and arm like the Iron had driven a spike through his elbow and into his chest. He gasped for breath, but his lungs wouldn’t cooperate.
“If this was Kazan territory, you’d be dead.”
Deret spat, and something warm and wet splattered against Lindon’s cheek. He was in far too much pain to even wipe it away. “On Sun Day, you’ll bring another box to me. If you make me come down here to pick it up myself, I might lose my temper. Do you understand me?”
Lindon nodded with his cheek pressed against dirty stone, even though every tiny motion of his head was agony.
Deret snorted in disgust, tossing the empty box down so that it clattered next to Lindon’s face. He stepped heavily on Lindon’s arm as he walked away, his footsteps retreated into the distance as Lindon was swallowed by pain and shame. It was one thing having everyone know that you were weak, but it was many times worse to be beaten like a stray dog and left in the street. He wished desperately to lose consciousness.
Instead, he heard the murmurs of disciples around him. They whispered to one another, but he still caught snatches of their conversation. It was exactly as he’d expected.
“…both new disciples?”
“…too weak…”
“…Unsouled?”
Finally, hands lifted him up by the shoulders, causing him to groan in pain. It was all he could do to avoid screaming.
“Hold on,” the boy carrying him said, and Lindon recognized his voice. It was the disciple that had delivered him to his room the day before. “I’m taking you to the Medicine Hall.”
Lindon wondered how many halls there were in the Heaven’s Glory School, but idle thoughts didn’t survive long amid the sea of pain. The disciple had lifted him off the ground and was carrying him over one shoulder, which was no doubt easy for someone with Iron strength, but every step sent agony shooting through Lindon’s body.
“I thought something like this might happen,” the disciple went on. “I was going to take you to see Elder Anses myself so no one singled you out, but I didn’t think I’d be too late.”
Lindon tried to say I was stupid, but it came out as “Shtupid.”
The disciple grunted. “They let the disciples compete against each other for everything. The strongest rise to the top, and they only want the strongest. As long as nobody dies
, the elders don’t care, but I don’t know why they let an Unsouled in here. Even the Coppers will be eyeing you.”
He ascended some steps, which Lindon’s ribs did not appreciate, and then a pair of doors swung open. The smell that wafted out was equal parts metallic blood, putrid sickness, and a sharp herbal scent that Lindon associated with medicine. The moans and muffled screams within were less than comforting.
“Another casualty?” a man asked.
“No, this one wasn’t her.” Lindon’s benefactor laid him down on a bed gently, but the impact still made him choke back a shout.
“New disciple,” he added.
“Ah. Leave him here, we’ve got limbs to sew back on first.”
The disciple tossed a blanket over Lindon and hesitated before leaving.
Gratitude, Lindon said, but it passed his injured jaw in a garbled mess of syllables. The disciple looked at him as though debating whether to say something or not. Finally he let out a heavy breath and leaned closer. “Listen. They don’t let disciples leave once they’re here, not unless something goes really wrong. But you…I don’t think the elders would chase you down if you just left. You’re from a clan, so go home. You won’t die here…but you might find that you want to.”
He left, leaving Lindon thinking fond thoughts of home. His bed was soft, the air didn’t have this permanent chill, and while no one treated him with any respect, they didn’t beat him in the streets either. And this was only the beginning of his journey. The outside world was a thousand times more dangerous.
Lindon’s bed was not private, crammed as it was between dozens of other beds filled with men and women with injuries at least as bad as his own. As his heart grew heavy and he blinked away tears of self-pity, he couldn’t help overhearing a conversation from the bed only inches away.
“We had her cornered,” the girl said through gritted teeth. “She was—go slower, that burns—backed up against a cave. Fifteen of us, one of her. Then she drew her sword, and we were all cut.”
“Was she that fast?” a woman asked. “Bite down on this, it will sting.”
A minute or so passed with the girl groaning in pain before she finally responded. “Not…fast. She’s not an Enforcer, I think. Probably a Ruler. When she drew her sword, we were all cut. Out of nowhere. She didn’t move.”
“The Sage was an Enforcer. Would he take a disciple with a different spirit?”
“How could I guess the thoughts of the Sword Sage? But she cut fifteen of us to the bone in one move, then she ran away. A few Enforcers followed her, since they held up better than the rest of us.”
Lindon gingerly craned his neck to the side, speaking as clearly as he could. “Forgive my curiosity. Where was this?”
Chapter 16
A woman of about forty carried a fistful of wild grass in one hand and a knife in the other. She leaned over the girl in the bed, smearing a paste on the girl’s wounds with the flat of her blade. The disciple’s face was red and covered in sweat, but both of them looked over after Lindon’s words.
He shifted position to make sure his badge was hidden beneath the sheet, so the girl would assume he was a fellow Iron. It must have worked, because her tone became defensive immediately. “We almost had her. Our Rulers put down a barrier formation to stop her from escaping, but she’s…if she’s not Jade already, then her sword must be some kind of treasure.”
“She couldn’t have escaped you without some dirty trick,” Lindon said. He’d learned years ago how to flatter a sacred artist’s ego, but the pressure of speaking clearly was burning his jaw. He tried to shorten his sentences as much as possible. “I’m tracking her down. Where did you see her?”
Something of a lisp had crept into his voice by the end, and he had to cut off the last word before pain brought tears back into his eyes. Hearing this, the girl looked at him in sympathy. “Did you run into her after us? Heavens grant you favor, but I’m not going after her again. My pride isn’t worth my life.”
She hissed as the healer applied another dose of the paste. The woman spoke with the tone of one who had great experience, “Pride is more important than you think. The elders haven’t acted against the girl because it lowers their status to treat a disciple as a threat. But now she’s killed six Irons and incapacitated nigh-on forty. At this rate, we won’t have anyone left with a whole body by Sun Day, but which elder would lower their station to fight a disciple? At a certain age, pride is all you have left.”
Lindon tried to speak, but his mouth might as well have been wired shut. The healer noticed and put her herbs down, rinsing her hands in a nearby basin. She moved over to Lindon’s side, cold fingers probing the side of his face.
The injured girl winced as she shifted position. “If you want to go after her, you’ll be going by yourself. I don’t know anyone else who’s willing to risk their lives for it by this point, no matter how much the elders are offering. We saw her in a cave on the north side of the mountain, a few miles up from the Ancestor’s Tomb. Don’t know how she survives the Remnants out there every night. Samara’s ring gathers them like flies to honey.”
The healer poked at his ribs, making him grunt in pain, and then tested his elbow. “Nothing broken,” she announced. “You’re lucky. You’d heal in a few weeks on your own, but we just got a delivery of herbs from down in the valley. Had extra thorngrass, so we made a batch of these. Elder’s orders: anyone who has to fight against the Sword Disciple gets one of these to bring them back to fighting shape.”
She pinched a tiny pill between her thumb and forefinger. It was red and green, and it smelled so sharp he thought his nose would bleed. “This won’t do anything for your spirit, and you won’t like the way it feels, but cycle it for a few days. If you don’t feel fresh as a Copper in three dawns, come back and see me. The problem might be deeper than I thought.”
Lindon gave her the hint of a bow, which was the best he could manage from a seated position with his ribs as tender as they were. She accepted it, bowing back, and handed him the pill.
Taking it was almost worse than the beating. He swallowed it and began cycling, and only seconds later, it felt as though needles were pricking the inside of his skin. He broke into a sweat, cycling faster, focusing his madra on the areas that needed healing. In only two or three breaths’ time, he wanted to quit.
The girl next to him looked on with sympathy. “I had one of those already. All the more reason not to go after her again, because I’m not taking a second one.” She watched longer before adding, “It helps if you cycle it a little at a time. Takes a day or two longer, but it’s not as much of a torture.”
Lindon appreciated the advice, but he couldn’t answer. He forced the pill’s energy through his veins, pushing his spirit to the limit and holding it there through sheer force of will. His earlier melancholy had evaporated.
Before, finding the Sword Sage’s disciple had been a distant thing. Now, it was right in front of his eyes. She could take him away from Sacred Valley, and that was his only hope. As long as he stayed here, there would always be another Kazan Ma Deret. He would never be anything more than Unsouled.
All day and into the night, Lindon cycled. It never stopped prickling him from the inside out, but he let the pain wash through him. If this was all he had to endure to escape his life, he would consider it a small price to pay.
***
Whitehall stood before the other elders of the Heaven’s Glory School. It was rare enough that they would all gather at once, even the elders from the various halls, but the Sage’s Disciple was a disaster big enough to warrant their full attention.
The room was humble enough, with reed mats on the floor and unadorned walls of orus wood, and each elder knelt on a flat cushion and sipped tea from a mug. This was meant to be a civilized meeting, held in an atmosphere of peace and equality.
Elder Whitehall stood in the center, having accepted neither cushion nor tea. Peace did not fit his agenda here. “Every Jade left in the Heaven’s Glory S
chool is in this room. We can march on the tomb right now, together! Even if the Sword Sage had been a Gold, his Remnant would be no match for all of us combined.”
Several of the elders exchanged glances, and many others simply sipped their tea in silence. They didn’t take him seriously, he knew. How could they, when he spoke with the squeaky lilt of an eight-year-old throwing a tantrum?
“We would not lightly disturb the Ancestor’s rest,” the Grand Elder said. The Grand Elder served a role in the school not unlike that of a Patriarch or Matriarch of a clan, and the Grand Elder of the Heaven’s Glory School was perhaps the most powerful Jade he’d ever personally seen in action. Even the Sword Sage, that strange wanderer from outside, had expressed admiration for their Grand Elder’s accomplishments.
“Is the Ancestor’s rest not disturbed by the presence of another corpse? Or the wild Remnant accompanying it?” Whitehall countered. “I do not understand why you haven’t cleared the tomb already!”
“You were not here,” Elder Rahm said, sounding as though his voice might crumble to dust. “We acted against the Sage for the good of the school, but he was far more powerful than we expected. I still have not recovered from the injury he left to my spirit, and I was luckier than some of our brothers and sisters.”
Whitehall had not missed that. There were three or four gaps around the room, places where Jades had not survived their ambush of the Sword Sage. And as Whitehall understood it, they had attacked full-force while the man slept. Even so, the Sage had left a number of casualties.
Their tragedy could be Whitehall’s great fortune, if he placed his pieces just right. “I wasn’t there, and that’s why I am all the more eager to do my part. If only a few of you accompany me, or even allow me to bring a group of Irons, I will survey the tomb and return. Together, we can devise a way to retrieve the stranger’s treasures. And his sword.”