Chapter 4

Naturally, Lindon concealed nothing before Elder Whisper. “This one engaged in a small conflict with a Copper practitioner from the clan. In the battle, the tree was broken, and a Remnant released. This one was able to protect himself.”

The Wei clan’s signature Path of the White Fox had been created by—and named for—the very sacred beast that stood before him now. They produced madra that deceived the senses, that created illusions, that twisted light and sound. And Elder Whisper was the Path’s original master.

A second five-tailed snowfox stepped out from the first, like an image walking away from a mirror. This second body dipped its muzzle into the bucket of fish even as the first continued speaking. “The Foundation stage defends himself from a Remnant, and leaves with its prize. Commendable.”

Lindon bowed deeply. “This one is unworthy of such praise.”

Neither Whisper responded. One continued devouring the fish, while the other examined Lindon with eyes of opaque darkness. On any other day, Lindon would take his leave now.

But the First Elder had thought that Whisper might be able to help him. “This one humbly begs a question of you, Elder.”

A fuzzy snout slid over his shoulder, cold lips brushing past his cheek. He focused his entire body on remaining still, on not trembling, as a third Elder Whisper rested his head on Lindon’s shoulder.

“Speak,” the third sacred beast said quietly.

“This one is not allowed to follow a Path of the sacred arts.”

“Why should the Wei clan water a tree that will never bear fruit?” Elder Whisper asked, simultaneously watching Lindon from three directions.

“An Unsouled may never have a family of his own, for fear of passing on his deformity to a new generation.” Lindon couldn’t keep bitterness from his voice. “He cannot practice sacred arts, and so cannot travel or engage in battle. This one cannot rise if he does not bring honor to the clan, but he is not permitted to do so.”

Elder Whisper and his two reflections began to pace around him, three five-tailed snowfoxes each bigger than a man. Lindon shivered as the fox’s head slid back away from his shoulder, but kept himself in place out of discipline. The elder was still an ancient sacred beast, mysterious and feral, and if he devoured Lindon no one in the clan would make a sound of protest.

“What are the sacred arts?” the elder asked, his murmur coming from three directions at once.

“The path of refining a spirit and pursuing connection to all of creation,” Lindon recited. There were many correct answers to Elder Whisper’s question, and any child of Sacred Valley could recount them on command.

“When does that path reach its end?”

This answer was more vague, but Lindon answered as best he could. “When an artist’s spirit is as pure as gold.” Gold was the final stage of any sacred artist’s Path.

A tail whipped the back of Lindon’s skull, leaving a sharp sting. “Is a Gold practitioner one with heaven and earth? Does he control everything in creation? Can he create worlds and break them at will?”

The obvious answer was ‘no,’ but Elder Whisper would not be satisfied by the obvious. In humility, Lindon fell to his knees and pressed his face to the floor, despite the groan of pain from his broken arm. “This one is unworthy to even guess at such profound answers, Elder.”

The fox’s chuckle softly filled the room as his three bodies continued to circle. “There is no profound answer here, young human. The answer is ‘no.’”

Hesitantly, Lindon raised his head. “Pardon this one’s ignorance, but…does the Path not end with Gold?”

“The spirit has no limit, nor does the sky. How could a true Path have an ending? If you studied until the end of the universe, you would still have not touched true comprehension. The Path of the White Fox is but one among countless others, and none reach the end.”

“This one thanks you for the enlightenment, Elder Whisper,” Lindon said, though he still didn’t fully understand what the sacred beast meant to teach him.

All three foxes paused, side by side, regarding Lindon. “When a traveler cannot find a path, sometimes he must make his own.”

Understanding washed over Lindon, and he bowed again out of gratitude. The shame that had been exposed by the First Elder’s words ignited like tinder until determination blazed alongside the lightning in his belly.

One of the Whispers blinked out of reality, leaving one staring Lindon in the eye and one feasting on fish. “Remember. Cutting a road through a forest is always harder than following one already cut.”

Lindon straightened. “If all it takes is work, Elder Whisper, this one will not fail you.”

“Fate is not fair, but it is just. Hard work is never in vain…even when it does not achieve what you wished.” With those words, the five-tailed fox faded away, leaving only the real Elder Whisper enjoying his meal.

Though the elder had clearly dismissed him, Lindon had to show his respect before leaving. He bowed deeply three times to Elder Whisper’s back, taking the empty bucket from the elder’s last feeding and returning down the stairs.

The trip down was no easier on Lindon’s legs than the trip up, and his broken arm had begun to ache even through his mother’s script, but he spent the time in contemplation. The First Elder had spoken of Lindon’s situation as though he should give up and accept his fate, but Whisper had given him the opposite advice.

Lindon knew which he preferred. The First Elder would have him wait at home, safe and relatively content, but he would die having accomplished nothing. The fruit’s power tingled in his core, begging him to process it, urging him to take the first step on a Path of his own devising.

When he returned home, his family was gone. He sat cross-legged in the center of his house, focused entirely inward, cycling his madra with a greater intensity than ever before.

He felt as though he should make some breakthrough tonight, as though Elder Whisper’s words should trigger some understanding that would take him to a higher level and allow him to comprehend some deep truth. Or perhaps the spirit-fruit would show more of an effect than it had so far, allowing him to unexpectedly advance to Copper.

Nothing happened beyond the ordinary. The storm in his core subsided somewhat as he continued digesting the fruit’s pure madra, and his legs eased somewhat as they received fresh power after their exertion earlier. Even his broken arm felt better, though he could just as easily attribute that to the fresh pain-suppressing script his mother had left for him.

He quickly bathed and slept.

***

The mirrored door to Elder Whisper’s chamber swung shut, leaving the ancient fox staring at a reflection of himself. He tilted his muzzled back, snapping up a fish and letting it slide down his throat.

He had spent most of the past five decades in this room, where every day was much like another. Compared to the excitement of his younger days, this was a perfectly satisfying way to spend a few years.

But now the Unsouled had visited of his own volition. That was interesting.

He left the remainder of his meal, pacing circles around his chamber. In the mirror, his sleek white reflection followed him.

Whisper harvested both light and dreams into his core, blending them so that he could blind any eyes, stifle any ears. The humans understood light to some limited degree, but they had great difficulty with dreams. Whisper, however, had spent a hundred years meditating on the nature of dreams.

For the most part, a dream was nothing more than a mind deceiving itself. Only rarely did dreams tap into greater forces…but when they did, they could reveal pieces of fate.

Over the years, Elder Whisper had developed a sense for that fate. It was distant, imperfect, but he could dimly see the shapes of impending events.

“The Unsouled is connected,” his reflection said.

“He could be,” Whisper corrected himself.

The reflected snowfox whipped its five tails in irritation. “A drowning man will seize any branch, no matter how thin.”

For centuries, the shape looming in his dreams has been dark and impossibly vast. It would crush them all beneath its ponderous weight, and there was no stopping it. Sacred Valley’s past was coming back and bringing death with it. But there was something strange about his premonition this time.

Somehow, he felt as though the titanic threat were years distant and months close at the same time. One and then the other, like fate had yet to decide.

Now, he saw the familiar shape of fate’s touch on the Unsouled: the resolve in his eyes, the agony of a difficult decision in the set of his shoulders, the timing of his appearance in the tower. The boy’s future was in flux.

However it turned out, Whisper had done what he could. Now he would wait…and watch.

***

Every morning, the entire Wei clan turned out to meditate and cycle. The more distant families followed this tradition in their homes, but the core members of the clan all gathered together. It became the time where clan business was conducted, and a center for gossip and competition.

Ordinarily, Lindon arrived in the central courtyard outside the Hall of Elders to find fifty or sixty people already in conversation. The number would grow as the sun approached, and by daybreak the two hundred or so most honored members of the Wei clan would be united in cycling their madra. Even Lindon, an Unsouled, was no exception.

Today, the courtyard buzzed with excitement. Under the gray light before dawn, over two hundred people gathered in the courtyard of the Elder’s Hall, and none were meditating. News of Wei Mon Teris’ punishment had spread, and they were here to witness the penalty for cowardice.

Public punishments weren’t unheard of, but the most recent one was over a year past. They were always an occasion for the families of the Wei clan to snipe at one another, to witness a rival falling down a step on the endless ladder of position. The Patriarch hadn’t shown himself, but the First Elder stood atop the steps of the hall, his long eyebrows hanging down to his white beard.

Wei Mon Teris knelt before him, no ropes binding him. Honor would keep him in place. The rest of the Mon family stood behind him, his immediate family in the front, with aunts and uncles and cousins behind.

Teris’ father, Wei Mon Keth, stood like a mountain over his son. With his arms crossed, his face set, and a sword on his back, he looked like the statue of an ancient guardian.

As dawn broke, the First Elder addressed the crowd. “Yesterday, the young Copper Enforcer called Wei Mon Teris failed our clan. Faced with a Remnant on the slopes of Mount Yoma, he fled for his life, abandoning a child of the Foundation stage to danger. For this punishment, I will deliver three lashes from my own hand. Let this serve as a warning to cowards.” From his belt, the First Elder produced a thin stick of supple orus wood.

More than pain, these lashes were meant to deliver humiliation. The clan didn’t want to injure a sacred artist with a future, but they had to curb any potential embarrassments. A public lashing would show the Mon family as weak, and would undermine their position in the Wei clan.

If they fell low enough, eager relatives would seize their assets, leaving them weakened in truth. Weakness and the appearance of weakness were the same, and only strength had a place in Sacred Valley.

For his part, Lindon would take no pleasure in watching Teris beaten. He had never expected the Copper to defend him in the first place, and this whole process was a grim reminder of what could happen to him at any time. He was reliant on the honor and goodwill of others to protect him, and those were thin walls.

But if he could walk his own Path…then strength would be his defense.

As the First Elder raised his hand for the initial blow, Wei Mon Keth stepped forward. Teris’ father was also the head of the Mon family, and it was expected that he should defend his son. But the glance he sent toward the Shi family, toward Lindon, carried an impending threat.

“One moment, Elder,” Keth said, stepping in front of his son. “There is one matter we must resolve first.”

The First Elder’s switch blurred through the air, halting to point at Keth’s face with the threatening air of a sword. “It is not your place to guard your son from punishment.”

Teris’ father scowled even deeper. “I beat Teris myself when he came home a coward. But he was not the only one to run.” Keth turned to Lindon. “Let the Unsouled be punished with him.”

Lindon froze when the crowd turned its attention to him. Keth was only trying to save face by pulling the Shi family down together; it was a common enough tactic in scenes like this, and the elders would see through it. Lindon was patiently waiting for the First Elder to rebuff Keth when he caught sight of someone pushing his way through the gathering.

Wei Shi Jaran had to lean on a cane, but he still shouldered other families aside. His scarred face turned from Lindon to the Mon family, but in the end, he addressed the First Elder. “First Elder, why do you allow this dog to bark?”

Lindon’s stomach dropped, and he could see his sister over the crowd. She paled when she heard her father’s words.

Mon Keth loomed over Shi Jaran, glaring down at the cripple. “Men do not fight with words alone. Will you face me on the stage?”

Jaran acted as though he hadn’t heard the challenge, keeping his attention fixed on the First Elder. “By what right does Wei Mon Keth accuse my son? Surely it is not lack of courage that keeps a Foundation child from defending a Copper fighter.”

“Of course your son could not have protected mine,” Keth responded, before the elder could open his mouth. “But he is a coward nonetheless. What bravery has he shown before the clan? What courage? Surely he should work twice as hard to prove his worth, but what has he brought to the clan?”

Jaran’s scarred lips twisted further into a sneer. “Once, you would not have said such things to my face. If not for these injuries, I would teach you a lesson here.”

“First prove that you have taught your own son his lessons.” Keth looked around and found his daughter, a ten-year-old girl with an arrow on her wooden badge. She ran to him eagerly, and he placed his hands on her shoulders. “Your son is at the Foundation stage. If he is not a coward, he will accept a fight from someone his own level.”

The little girl looked Lindon straight in the eyes. “I, Wei Mon Eri, challenge Wei Shi Lindon to a duel of honor before the entire clan.”

The words echoed in the courtyard, accompanied by shocked silence.

They planned this, Lindon realized, hearing the girl’s recited challenge. They needed to distract the other families from their dishonor.

Perhaps the First Elder would have prevented Wei Mon Keth from speaking further, had he been given a chance. He’d surely seen more complex gambits from subtle opponents. But Lindon’s father had opened his mouth, and thereby opened a crack in his son’s armor. Now, Lindon was feeling the sting of the blade.

When a child first passed their test of spirit and received a Foundation-level badge, they were taught a rudimentary Foundation technique. This technique was the same for everyone in the clan, and was designed to acclimate children to feeling and cycling their own madra. When the child was ready, they would learn a more advanced cycling technique, one suited for their future Path. Unless the child was Unsouled.

Lindon would never learn a Path, so there was no point in preparing his soul for one. Even eight years after reaching Foundation, Lindon practiced the same basic cycling technique. Asking him to fight was like asking a soldier to step onto a battlefield armed only with a training sword.

Even the ten-year-old daughter of the Mon family would be better off than he was. She was a Striker on the Path of the White Fox, and surely her family would have taught her a better Foundation technique. Lindon had the advantage of size and weight, but she had the advantage of superior madra control.

He had no certainty in being able to defeat a girl five years his junior. He should have been used to shame by now, but that realization still hurt.

“Well?” Mon Eri demanded, when Lindon hadn’t responded to her challenge. The entire courtyard, packed with the heart of the Wei clan, stood waiting for his response. “Do you accept or not?”

“He has no reason to fight,” Jaran said, with a glance back at his son. “Only the Mon family has something to prove. Besides, you can see his injury for yourself.”

Wei Mon Keth crossed his arms and gave a harsh laugh. “If he is not a coward, he will answer.”

Hundreds of the Wei clan were gathered, including the First Elder. The weight of the combined attention pressed into him on every side, like a tightening fist.

The pressure seemed to push his shame deeper, rubbing it in like salt into a wound. He was useless, he was crippled, and now everyone was staring at him. The pain that leaked through his sling-bound arm was nothing compared to this. Lindon looked up to Whisper’s tower, imagining he could feel eyes on him even from the room at the top.

“When a traveler cannot find a path, sometimes he must make his own.”

Eri stepped forward when Lindon didn’t answer immediately, rubbing her fist like she couldn’t wait to drive it into Lindon’s face. Her father held her back, looking somewhat surprised.

When Lindon’s voice finally came out, even he was somewhat surprised. “In the Wei clan, there is only one family that produces cowards,” he said to Keth, the head of the Mon family.

Laughter and whispers traveled quietly around the gathered families, and Keth’s face turned red with anger. He forced out a few words: “Then you accept?”

It was up to the challenged party to set the terms, so he did. “Seven dawns from now,” Lindon said. “To surrender.”

For Lindon, there was no winning this fight. Either he defeated Eri, in which case he had beaten a ten-year-old girl, or he wouldn’t. No matter the outcome, he would lose face for his family.

He could only salvage a little by putting up a brave front, bowing to Wei Mon Eri with his fists pressed together. After a moment in which she looked like she would attack him, she returned the salute.

“If this distraction is over, I will get on with the business at hand,” the First Elder said. He flourished his smooth orus branch, looking down on Teris.

As the first strike cracked across Teris’ back, leading to a cry of pain, his family paid no heed. They were still watching Lindon.

***

When he wasn’t carrying out a special task for his Soulsmith mother, Lindon spent the second half of every day in the clan archive. The building was scarcely more noticeable than any ordinary house, with faded white walls and a wide purple-tiled roof. If Lindon had never seen it before, he might have mistaken it for the home of one of the Wei clan’s smaller families.

As the sun passed noon, he arrived in the archive. He first retrieved a broom to sweep the front step, which took twice as long as normal since he was forced to work one-handed, then re-organized the Path manuals that a few young Coppers had disturbed the previous evening. His fingers itched when he worked on this shelf, and he had to fight the temptation to sneak a glimpse, though the minimum penalty for an Unsouled studying sacred arts was a private beating. He’d survived such punishments before, and he would again. If he had to discover his own Path, he would eventually need an example.

For now, he’d settle for a shortcut.

The Eighth Elder was supposed to monitor the archive, but Lindon could never tell when the man was doing his job properly or not. As a Forger on the Path of the White Fox, the man was a master of the Fox Mirror technique; he could craft illusions as precise as a mirror’s reflection. More than once, Lindon had dared to sneak a glimpse into a simple Path manual, and the elder had appeared out of nowhere to punish him. Other times, Lindon had left the archives to spot the elder passed out on the roof.

For his purposes, so long as he didn’t open a Path, he had the archive to himself. Once he’d finished his chores, which took him only an hour or two, he began to gather the scrolls, folders, tablets, and books he needed for research.

Following a Path of the sacred arts was often likened to a journey, and he would never embark on a journey without a plan.

Shortcuts of advancement were common legends in Sacred Valley, and while many were proven to be effective—like the fruit of an ancestral orus tree—most were too rare, expensive, or dangerous for ordinary sacred artists. Lindon needed to hunt for a loophole, which meant poring over every option one by one.

Fortunately, the archive was not the clan’s most popular building. He had plenty of time to himself.

One scroll contained a personal letter from an explorer who had visited the four peaks of Sacred Valley in search of exotic madra aspects. She wrote of Greatfather’s tears, a spring that bubbled at the top of the mountain known as the Greatfather.

“One handful of water restored my aching body and flagging spirit. Two sent me into a cycling trance from which I would not emerge for three nights and days, having imparted to my spirit a density and potency that I had never before known. As I had not bathed in all that time, I dipped myself briefly into the spring, only to find the water anything but gentle. It scoured my arm like a frozen blade, and when I removed my hand, I found my skin more youthful and supple than ever before, in great contrast to the rest of my body. I advise any artist of the Jade to visit Greatfather’s peak as soon as they are able, provided they can withstand the storms and the pain of the pool itself.”

Lindon held down the scroll with his broken arm and copied the passage with his own brush, though the spring was not a possibility for him. Not yet. The Holy Wind School, which claimed the Greatfather as their territory, would never allow anyone less prestigious than a clan elder to visit their spring. And then only if they brought generous gifts.

The next possibility came in the form of a recipe pressed onto a wax tablet:

Bloodmaker Pill

Four feathers of a downy shrike

The spring branch of a marauder root, shaved clean

Three small leaves from any life-aspected herb

Blood essence from one Remnant of at least the fire aspect

Blood essence from one Remnant of at least the water aspect

Refine all ingredients in a refinery of twelfth grade or higher, arranging them according to the Six-Pointed Star method. Combine into a state of balance, then weigh and blend. Shape into pill form, and allow to stabilize for three days. A successful pill should have the sheen of polished gold and the color of new blood.

Carries the blood aspect, but improves the basic spiritual foundation. Most effective when taken before Copper.

Lindon copied it down, and a quick perusal of the clan’s herb stores—located in the back of the archive—suggested that they should have all the necessary ingredients in storage. His excitement grew until he realized that the only refiner with enough skill to prepare such a pill was gone, on a pilgrimage to the Heaven’s Glory School. Lindon couldn’t even begin to understand what the “Six-Pointed Star method” was, much less imitate it himself. And he had no idea where he would get a refinery of any grade.

The disappointment was a blow, but not enough to stop him. He had a time limit now, and if he couldn’t figure out a solution before his duel with Eri, he might as well not show up. His next possibility came from an offhand mention in a funeral document, chronicling the possessions of a traveler who had died in Wei clan territory. “He carried with him a parasite ring, of braided halfsilver etched with intricate script, which went into the keeping of the Patriarch to award to a promising practitioner of the Sacred Arts.”

That one bore investigation for later. A parasite ring would slow the cycling process, making it more difficult but also more rewarding. He’d heard it likened to weight training for the soul. He would keep watch for a way to earn or steal this ring from the Patriarch, or possibly earn one for himself if he could find a craftsman from the Golden Sword School. The only drawback was time; it would take time to acquire such a ring, and longer for it to show any effect. He marked his notes on the parasite ring, indicating that he should consider it once the duel was over.

Other books held fanciful legends for young sacred artists, their imaginations full of the wonders and powers out there in the world. It spoke of ancestral orus trees and their fruits—a story that was true, per Lindon’s experience, but exaggerated—and the Jester Twins, who would alternately hand out miraculous gifts or crippling curses. It told of the heavenly guardian within Mount Samara, and how enterprising disciples of the Heaven’s Glory School might earn a mark of its favor, and of the mythical “true badges” that amplified the power of human madra. Of the Oblivion Wine, which the Fallen Leaf elders always sold a year after the opening of the Nethergate. And it spoke of the Torchyard, an apocryphal location that Elder Whisper was said to have visited in his youth.

The Torchyard was supposedly a field of condensed fiery energy where, if you survived, you could harvest enough vital aura to fuel your advancement even to the legendary Gold stage. According to clan rumors, though, even Elder Whisper hadn’t managed to bear the torments of the Torchyard that long.

The story of the sacred fruit lent credibility to the other tales, but none of them were real possibilities. One could only meet the Jester Twins by chance, and their gifts were as likely to harm as help. He wasn’t a disciple of Heaven’s Glory, the true badges were no more than stories, and the Torchyard was far beyond his power. Even if he could endure the trip and make it back in less than a week, he didn’t know how to harvest natural fire aura, so he would simply burn to death.

His notes became shorter and shorter, his brush-strokes weighted by disappointment. He had combed through piles of likely manuscripts all day, and while he hadn’t exactly expected to stumble across a miracle, he had at least hoped for a possible lead. He’d only started with six full days between him and his deadline, and now the first was gone.

The sun had completely set, and he stood to light a candle. Once it burned down to the next mark, the archive would be closed, and he could leave. He would use this last hour to clean up, returning his texts to their places.

As he did, the Path manuals caught his eye once again. There were eight copies of The Path of the White Fox, two for each specialized technique. If he could borrow the one for Strikers, he could at least familiarize himself with the Foundation Mon Eri would use. Maybe he could find some weakness, something to exploit.

But he would never be able to read the manual long enough, and besides, Paths were meant to be studied for years. The White Fox was not the only Path on the shelf, though. There were two scrolls and a thick tome as well, all of them bearing Paths that the Wei clan had acquired from outside. No one practiced them, as far as Lindon knew, because they required madra of different aspects than the Wei clan cultivated. Those called to Lindon, but ultimately he turned from those as well. They may allow him to win the duel, but the First Elder would recognize what he had done and punish him afterwards.

He reached down and shelved a tablet, and in doing so, caught a glimpse of another shelf he hadn’t considered. Technique manuals described skills that could be cultivated in addition to a primary Path, and they were much shorter than Path manuals, often a single plaque or a finger-thin scroll.

Lindon knelt for a closer look. The section for technique manuals took up two shelves, divided according to the aspect the techniques required. Strips of white jade labeled the sections: here the character for fire, there the symbol for purification. His gaze skipped from section to section, from cloud to lightning to light to dreams. The last two had by far the largest selection, dealing as they did with madra of the White Fox.

But there was a section at the end of the bottom shelf with only one entry. An old book, it was little more than a sheaf of yellowed papers, bound together by string on one side. The jade strip declaring its requirements said, simply, “None.”

Carefully, Lindon withdrew the book, examining the name of this technique: Heart of Twin Stars.