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January 16 - February 16, 2023
Whatever she had been about to say vanished from her mind, for at that moment, Zen smiled. It was slow, and small, a slight curving of his mouth that crinkled his eyes and dimpled his cheeks, cracking the facade of stern rigidity to his features and giving a glimpse of a boy who might have been. A night of black clouds, parting to reveal a bright moon.
“If I train you and take you to Guarded Mountain,” he said, “you promise you’ll study hard and stay away from channeling qì irresponsibly?” Lan pressed a fist to her palm in a salute. “I swear it on all the pork buns in the Last Kingdom.” “Well, now.” His eyes held playfulness like a dusting of stars. “That is a very serious vow.”
For the first time in her life, Lan had nothing to say. She had learned the broad strokes of her kingdom’s history with her tutors as a child, and then she’d picked up scraps of stories from the elders and the villagers, the townsfolk and the dishwashers. Now it felt as though she were learning a part of history that had somehow disappeared from the books, been scrubbed from the collective memories of the Hin. She was quiet for the rest of the meal.
“What the—” Lan spun at the voice, her hands darting to cover her breasts. Standing on the back terrace of the Chamber of Waterfall Thoughts, frozen in equal parts disbelief and outrage, was none other than Zen. The sound of the waterfall had masked his footsteps. It was almost comical how wide his eyes and mouth stretched, the tips of his ears flaming red—whether from fury or embarrassment, Lan couldn’t tell. Pointing a shaking finger at her and covering his eyes with his other hand, he spluttered, “You—that’s—sacred—out—out!”
He swallowed and closed his eyes briefly, as though praying to his ancestors for patience. “That,” he said, “is the Spring of Crystal Cold.” No wonder it was freezing, Lan thought, but she dipped her head and said, “Sorry.”
Zen brushed a hand over his face and sighed into it. His flush was fading. Finally, he cleared his throat and turned to fully face her.
He sighed, rubbing a hand over his mouth as he looked at her with an expression so weary, she could practically hear What am I to do with you? echoing in his mind.
The buns were delicious. Lan wished everything in this world could bring her a joy as simple as that of eating steamed buns. Granted, these were vegetable buns, not pork (“ ‘There shall be no lives taken within the Boundary Seal of Skies’ End,’ Code of Conduct rule number seventeen,” Zen reminded her), but to her empty stomach, anything was a relief.
Zen’s calligraphy was perfect, effortless, each sweep of his brush bearing the precision of a scalpel and the grace of art. Lan felt her cheeks heating as she did her best—but her education had stopped at the age of six, and until this afternoon, it had been twelve cycles since she’d picked up a brush.
The heat spread down to her neck, jumbling her mind even further. She’d always prided herself in her quick wit and silver words and her propensity for getting out of trouble—but in this moment, with Zen watching her, she would have given anything to have been a proper, educated noblewoman.
“It’ll take time, but—here.” He closed his cool fingers over hers, and the heat in her face had nothing to do with shame anymore. She felt his breath against her neck as he leaned over her to reposition her fingers in the correct grip. Her heart tumbled in her chest; he quietly spoke to her on methods to balance the brush, but all that she could focus on was the sensation of his touch. He no longer wore the black gloves he’d had on for most of their journey.
Zen paused, tipping his head to her. A streak of black hair spilled over his face. This close, she could make out the individual lashes of his eyes, see her face reflected in the midnight of his irises. He looked down, and she felt a small thrill that he did not pull back.
If a songgirl had told her this, Lan would have gathered her into her arms and held her until the sun rose. But it was Zen, elegant, beautiful, distant Zen, and she could think of nothing more to do than sit here with her knuckles white against her brush, his hand still draped loosely over hers as though he’d forgotten all about it. Instead, a thought came to her. I want to be powerful.
“Zen,” she said softly. He gave a slow blink, gaze clearing as it found her from a torrent of memories. “Hmm?” “Thank you,” Lan said. “For everything. I’m going to work hard.” The drowsy, distant look of his face had gone, replaced by a steely expression. As though by instinct, his thumb swept a stroke over the back of her hand, sending shivers up her arm.
His smile was faint, his fingers warm and steady against hers. “No difference from a human. You aim for the demon’s core of qì—the equivalent to our hearts.” His gaze flickered, drifting over her face. “Then you pierce.” For some reason, her heart tumbled and her breath came fast. “I’ll remember that,” Lan said. “Try not to miss. A demon will not be inclined to give you a second chance.” Her blade pressed against the fabric of his black páo. “I won’t miss.” His thumb tapped involuntarily against her skin.
Gently, his hand came to rest against the handle of her little blade, his fingers cool against hers. “When you are able to pierce my heart with this dagger,” Zen said, “you will be good enough to stand as my equal in practitioning.”
She stood at the peak of Skies’ End. Cliffs on every side plunged sharply into the mist below, but up here, the air was clear. The sky was an endless stretch of pale gray, broken by the undulating shadows of the Yuèlù Mountains. As the sun rose, light and color seeped into the world like ink, blotting fiery reds and golds across the clouds and dotting the landscape emerald with the Last Kingdom’s famous pines.
“Tell me why this is the most important thing you have learned.” Lan cut through her Seal, and her protective wall collapsed in a cloud of dust and rock. “Because I wished to use my power to protect those I loved,” she said quietly.
“I do know. I would use it so that no one need ever be hurt again when they are vulnerable.” “And what would you give in exchange for this power?” The answer came to her from the morning her world had ended, from watching her mother’s life bleed out before her eyes. “Everything,” Lan whispered.
Dé’zǐ waved a hand. “My ancestors would turn over in their graves, but I have always had little patience for the Hin methods of rote education and strict customs. All surface-level nonsense stipulated by some boring old farts hundreds of cycles ago and still carried out by boring young farts at our school to this day.” “Grandmaster,” she exclaimed, unable to hold back a startled laugh.
Outlined in the backlight of the moon was one of the most attractive men Lan had ever seen. If Zen held an imperial and commanding beauty, this man bore a feral type of charm: all sharp, rectangular angles and hard planes of muscles. His hair was cut short, like Zen’s, but with untamed, windswept curls. Most arresting, however, were his eyes: gray irises ringed with pale gold, shadowed beneath strong black brows.
“Lan.” She flinched at Zen’s tone. He had not moved. “Let’s go.” His face had been wiped clean as a slate: beautiful yet terrible to behold, like a night without stars. That expression—it reminded her of the time his eyes had turned completely black at the walls of Haak’gong. As Zen turned to leave, he paused and looked directly at the Medicine disciple. Shàn’jūn dropped his gaze. Behind him, Tai tensed. His eyes trailed Zen as the latter strode past him and back down the halls of the bookhouse.
A part of her wanted to stay: extract the metalwork from her arm, destroy the tracking spell, and stay at Skies’ End, where, in the past moon, she had begun to find a semblance of a home. But she had spent enough of her life hiding. Twelve long cycles, most of it spent looking away from the truth of her kingdom, casting her gaze down and bowing before the Elantians even as her friends and loved ones and other people around her continued to die. It was time to stop running. It was time to face the truth of whatever her mother had entrusted to her.
Zen drew a sharp breath. “The School of Guarded Fists,” he whispered. “This is where it was all along?” She glanced at Zen. He looked pale in the moonlight, a figure cut neatly in monochrome, those black-fire eyes wide with reverence.
The will to counter the mó was peace. Joy. Love. All that made this world, this life, worth living. All that separated the living from the dead.
Zen tilted his face, his cheek brushing against Lan’s temple, the soft strands of her hair. He felt her heartbeat against his, the rise and fall of her chest as her breaths came quickly. She trusted him with her life. The knowledge was like a bolt of lightning, sparking through his veins and setting him aflame.
A soft touch on his shoulder, a voice of silver bells. “Zen?” Zen straightened. Lan was watching him, expression cautious.
Lan inhaled sharply. She felt Zen’s hand brush her sleeve: a touch of comfort, and a question. Her heart, her mind were in freefall as she instinctively reached for him. His fingers, burning against her ice-cold ones, clasped around hers.
When the time is right, This ocarina will sing… And sing it did. Her responses seemed to have worked as an invisible key to unlock it. Music flowed, a single, lonely tune winding through the chamber. It coursed through Lan, flooding her mind and veins and into her very soul. Something inside her stirred: something ancient, a calling that felt like home.
When the time is right, this ocarina will sing for the Ruin of Gods. Lan blew. The purest note rang out, a crystal snowdrop against the stale air of the chamber. There was a sound like a ghostly sigh by Lan’s side. Then, like a snipped string, the remaining Seal over the chamber broke. She heard Zen’s shout as qì quivered around the chamber; felt the implosion of the net of energies Shēn Ài had woven all around them—the Seal Zen had been searching for.
“Lan. Lan, look at me.” She found Zen’s gaze. His expression was one of ice frozen over, reminiscent of what she had seen the night he’d brought her out of Haak’gong. There had been no pity on his face, only hard-edged empathy. Do not let them win today.
She had not been able to save them—not twelve cycles ago, not even today. She would not let that happen again. Lan clenched her teeth and brushed away the wetness on her cheeks. She stood sharply, wrenching her arm from Zen’s. “Thank you for accompanying me here, Zen,” she said. He dipped his head slightly, those ink-black lashes fluttering as he watched her.
Lan had wrapped her arms around herself, curling inward. Her eyes, though, she kept wide open. The image struck deep in Zen’s heart. He knew the feeling of helplessness in the face of violence. After all, he had stood in her place thirteen cycles ago, before a different group of soldiers bearing dragon-tailed pennants and armor of gold.
“Zen?” He blinked, his attention returning to the present. Lan stood opposite him. In the pale glow of the Seals around them, her face was white as a ghost. He stared at her, at this songgirl he’d found in a common teahouse in Haak’gong, and for the first time felt the tug of the strings of fate, moving him in a direction he could not have anticipated.
Yet Zen thought of the grandmaster they had seen in the courtyard, reduced to a savage mó in a desperate bid to protect his school; to Shēn Ài and the disciples of the School of Guarded Fists, forced to bind their souls into the limbo between life and death; to the once-great symbol of civilization reduced to ruin by Elantian conquerors, unburied bodies of its defenders mocked by their murderers. A vicious cycle he had seen across the Last Kingdom, across his people. This was the consequence of refusing power. This was the damnation of rejecting the idea of becoming gods: you became ruled by
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For a moment, he thought she might refuse. Then Lan leaned forward, squinting at him. “Why are you smiling? I get nervous when you’re all sweet talk and honeyed words.” He frowned. “You would have me brood all day, then?” She grinned. “Exactly,” she said, and just like that, she handed him the box that held the ocarina. It was no heavier than a rock, yet it seemed to hold the weight of worlds as he held it in his palms. The weight of her trust.
The song found her first. A melody pulled from her lips through the ocarina: something haunting, something that seemed to embody the passage of time, the flow of rivers into the sea, the brush of wind against bamboo leaves, the drip of rain down gray-tiled eaves. Suddenly, she was in that liminal space between reality and subconsciousness she had found whenever she’d sung back at the Teahouse, and she knew, without knowing, how to play, where to touch her fingers to coax the notes from the clay.
Between the plumes of his breath and the shifting curtains of snow, something moved. It was neither shape nor shadow, but something that filled the gaps of in-between. Something with no form but the vague edges of a presence made of the rotten aura of blood and bone and broken things. The thing watched the boy, and the boy stared back. The initial fright gone, he was now overtaken by only curiosity—and a resigned fatalism that nothing in the world could hurt him more than what he had already been through. He would be wrong.
“Did you not call for me?” the bodiless voice murmured. “Did you not cast an unspoken wish for power? For revenge? For the chance to do to them what they did to your family?” A jagged chuckle, the sound of nails scraping against bone. “Gaze not upon me with such disgust, mortal, for I am summoned by the yīn of grief and rage and death. Like calls to like, and like it or not, you called me.”
The boy knew—knew—better than to trust it, for he had read of demons as wicked creatures to be vanquished by only the most experienced of shamans and practitioners. But he looked to the yurt buried in the snow, to the black flame banner that had once flown high and mighty over the sprawling steppes of his homeland. And that rage and helpless despair sharpened into something else inside him. Better to be burned by the fire of his own fury, to taste the bitterness of his wish for revenge, than to feel that devastating emptiness of nothingness his loss had left him.
“I want power,” he said. “I want enough power that I will never experience this again. I want enough power to make them understand what I have gone through, what my family has suffered.” The response was immediate. “And what would you give for that power?” He recognized the sly edge to the demon’s voice, but it did nothing to stop his answer. “Anything.” A small price, he thought, for one who had nothing left.
The shape in the snow grew clearer; the boy could make out a pair of black eyes limned the color of blood, bones and flesh shifting into some semblance of a warped face. He was not frightened. He knew that the true demons in this world wore the faces of men.
“…Zen?” He flinched and sat up so quickly that his head spun. Huddled beneath a willow farther back on the banks of the river was Lan. Her face was drawn, her eyes large as she watched him, arms wrapped around her knees. Relief crashed into him, and he almost lay back down on the sand. Alive—she was alive. “Lan,” he croaked, and began to turn toward her. She drew back. He froze. She was looking at him with fear written plainly on her face—and the worst part was that he recognized it. Had seen it, more than once before.
She shifted her arm, and that was when he realized that the cherry blossom patterns on her páo were actually splatters of blood. “How do you not remember?” she whispered, and the accusation in her voice hurt more than any blade. The last time someone had spoken these words to him, it was Shàn’jūn, kneeling on the floor of the Chamber of a Hundred Healings, clutching a bleeding, eleven-cycles-old Yeshin Noro Dilaya.
Lan had been the only person in his life to not know of his past, and he had wanted to keep it that way. She’d trusted him, and he’d held on to her trust like a drowning man to air. He’d liked the way she looked at him, gaze clear of the prejudices that clouded that of others at Skies’ End. He’d liked living in a lie with her.
“Stop.” His voice cracked. He reached up and shoved her arm away from his face. Her touch threatened to unmoor him; the gentleness to her tone was the furthest from anything he deserved. “Are you not afraid?” She pressed her lips together for a moment. “I was, back there,” she confessed. “But not anymore, I don’t think.”
“Why not? I am a demonic practitioner. I lost control over one of those creatures. I could have killed you.” She tipped her head, narrowing her eyes as she searched his face. “But you didn’t,” she said. Her fingers still pressed against his face between the fabric of her páo, and he held very still, afraid one move would drive away her touch. “You’re Zen. You saved my life, many times over. You taught me practitioning, you gave me the chance to fight back. I was afraid of your demon but never of you.”
As much as he’d tried to fight it, he’d come to rely on the power of the demon coiled inside him. He had nothing now—no qì to perform a Seal against the tracking spell, to shield Lan from the pain of the metalwork, even to create a Gate Seal back to Skies’ End. Nothing to fight with. Nothing to defend himself with. And no power to protect those he loved.
As the sedative began to take effect, she heard Master Nóng tell Zen that only he and his attendants could remain in the chamber. Lan wanted to reach out, to ask Zen to stay with her, but her tongue had grown heavy and her eyelids were drooping. Zen’s face loomed out of the darkness until he, too, swirled into shadows, her name on his lips fading into smoke.
The story made sense of all that she had come to learn of Zen in the past few weeks. His rigid adherence to the principles of the Way. His status at the school, powerful and revered yet feared. The guilt with which he spoke of demonic practitioning. Last night, history had repeated itself. But he is free of the demon now, Lan thought, yet the image of his pale, unmarred hands flashed in her mind’s eye. Zen had been released from his bargain with the demon—at a huge cost.
