The Chuluu Korikh
From The Seejin Classification of Deities, compiled in the Annals of the Red Emperor, recorded by Vachir Mogoi, High Historian of Sinegard
Long before the days of the Red Emperor, this country was not yet a great empire, but a sparse land populated by a small scattering of tribes. These tribesmen were horse-riding nomads from the north, who had been cast out of the Hinterlands by the hordes of the great khan. Now they struggled to survive in this strange, warm land.
They were ignorant of many things: the cycles of the rain, the tides of the Murui River, the variations of soil. They knew not how to plow the land or to sow seeds so they could grow food instead of hunt for it. They needed guidance. They needed the gods.
But the deities of the Pantheon were yet reluctant to grant their aid to mankind.
“Men are selfish and petty,” argued Erlang Shen, Grand Marshal of the Heavenly Forces. “Their life spans are so short that they give no thought to the future of the land. If we lend them aid, they will drain this earth and squabble among themselves. There will be no peace.”
“But they are suffering now.” Erlang Shen’s twin sister, the beautiful Sanshengmu, led the opposing faction. “We have the power to help them. Why do we withhold it?”
“You are blind, sister,” said Erlang Shen. “You think too highly of mortals. They give nothing to the universe, and the universe owes them nothing in return. If they cannot survive, then let them die.”
He issued a heavenly order forbidding any entity in the Pantheon from interfering with mortal matters. But Sanshengmu, always the gentler of the two, was convinced that her brother was too quick to judge mankind. She hatched a plan to descend to Earth in secret, in hopes of proving to the Pantheon that men were worthy of help from the gods. However, Erlang Shen was alerted to Sanshengmu’s plot at the last moment, and he gave chase. In her haste to escape from her brother, Sanshengmu landed badly on Earth.
She lay on the road for three days. Her mortal guise was of a woman of uncommon beauty. In those times, that was a dangerous thing to be.
The first man who found her, a soldier, raped her and left her for dead.
The second man, a merchant, took her clothes but left her behind, as she would have been too heavy for his wagon.
The third man was a hunter. When he saw Sanshengmu he took off his cloak and wrapped her in it. Then he carried her back to his tent.
“Why are you helping me?” Sanshengmu asked. “You are a human. You live only to prey upon each other. You have no compassion. All you do is satisfy your own greed.”
“Not all humans,” said the hunter. “Not me.”
By the time they reached his tent, Sanshengmu had fallen in love.
She married the hunter. She taught the men of the hunter’s tribe many things: how to chant at the sky for rain, how to read the patterns of the weather in the cracked shell of a tortoise, how to burn incense to appease the deities of agriculture in return for a bountiful harvest.
The hunter’s tribe flourished and spread across the fertile land of Nikan. Word spread of the living goddess who had come to Earth. Sanshengmu’s worshippers increased in number across the country. The men of Nikan lit incense and built statues in her honor, the first divine entity they had ever known of.
And in time, she bore the hunter a child.
From his throne in the heavens, Erlang Shen watched, and grew enraged.
When Sanshengmu’s son reached his first birthday, Erlang Shen journeyed down to the world of man. He set fire to the banquet tent, driving out the guests in a panicked terror. He impaled the hunter with his great three-pronged spear and killed him. He took Sanshengmu’s son and hurled him off the side of a mountain. Then he grasped his horrified sister by the neck and lifted her in the air.
“You cannot kill me,” choked Sanshengmu. “You are bound to me. We are two halves of one whole. You cannot survive my death.”
“No,” acknowledged Erlang Shen. “But I can imprison you. Since you love the world of men so much, I will build for you an earthly prison, where you will pass an eternity. This will be your punishment for daring to love a mortal.”
As he spoke, a great mountain formed in the air. He flung his twin sister away from him, and the mountain sank on top of her, an unbreakable prison of stone. Sanshengmu tried and tried to escape, but inside her prison, she could not access her magic.
She languished in that stone prison for years. And every moment was torture to the goddess, who had once flown free through the heavens.
There are many stories about Sanshengmu. There are stories of her son, the Lotus Warrior, and how he was the first shaman to walk Nikan, a liaison between gods and men. There are stories of his war against his uncle, Erlang Shen, in order to free his mother.
There are stories, too, about the Chuluu Korikh. There are stories of the monkey king, the arrogant shaman who was locked for five thousand years within by the Jade Emperor as punishment for his impudence. One could say that this was the beginning of the age of stories, because that was the beginning of the age of shamans.
Much is true. Much more is not.
But one thing can be said to be fact. To this day, of all the places on this Earth, only the Chuluu Korikh may contain a god.
“Are you finally going to tell me where you’re headed?” Kitay asked. “Or did you call me here just to say goodbye?”
Rin was packing her equipment into traveling bags, deliberately avoiding eye contact with Kitay. She had avoided him the past week while she and Altan planned their journey.
Altan had forbidden her to speak of it to anyone outside the Cike. He and Rin would travel to the Chuluu Korikh alone. But if they succeeded, Rin wanted Kitay to know what was coming. She wanted him to know when to flee.
“We’re leaving as soon as the gelding is ready,” she said. Chaghan and Qara had departed Golyn Niis on the only halfway decent horse that the Federation hadn’t taken with them. It had taken days to find another gelding that wasn’t diseased or dying, and days more to nurture it back to a state fit for travel.
“Can I ask where to?” Kitay asked. He tried not to display his annoyance, but she knew him too well to overlook it; irritation was written across his face. Kitay was not used to missing information; she knew he resented her for it.
She hesitated, and then said, “The Kukhonin range.”
“Kukhonin?” Kitay repeated.
“Two days’ ride south from here.” She rummaged around in her bag to avoid looking at him. She had packed an enormous amount of poppy seed, everything from Enki’s stores that she could hold. Of course, none of it would be useful inside the Chuluu Korikh itself, but once they left the mountain, once they had freed every shaman inside . . .
“I know where the Kukhonin range is,” Kitay said impatiently. “I want to know why you’re riding in the opposite direction from Mugen’s main column.”
You have to tell him. Rin could not see a way of warning Kitay without divulging part of Altan’s plan. Otherwise he would insist on finding out for himself, and his curiosity would spell the death of him. She set the bag down, straightened up, and met Kitay’s eyes.
“Altan wants to raise an army.”
Kitay made a noise of disbelief. “Come again?”
“It’s . . . they’re . . . You wouldn’t understand if I told you.” How was she to explain this to him? Kitay had never studied Lore. Kitay had never truly believed in the gods, not even after the battle at Sinegard. Kitay thought that shamanism was a metaphor for arcane martial arts, that Rin and Altan’s abilities were sleights of hand and parlor tricks. Kitay did not know what lay in the Pantheon. Kitay did not understand the danger they were about to unleash.
“Just—look, I’m trying to warn you—”
“No, you’re trying to deceive me. You don’t get to deceive me,” Kitay said very loudly. “I have seen cities burning. I have seen you do what mortals should not be able to do. I have seen you raise fire. I think I have the right to know. Try me.”
“Fine.”
She told him.
Amazingly, he believed her.
“This sounds like a plan where many things could go wrong,” said Kitay when she finished. “How does Altan even know this army will fight for him?”
“They’re Nikara,” said Rin. “They have to. They’ve fought for the Empire before.”
“The same Empire that had them buried alive in the first place?”
“Not buried alive,” she said. “Immured.”
“Oh, sorry,” Kitay amended, “immured. Enclosed in stone in some magic mountain, because they became so powerful that a fucking mountain was the only thing that could stop them tearing apart entire villages. This is the army you’re just going to set loose on the country. This is what you think is going to save Nikan. Who came up with this, you or your opium-addled commander? Because this sure as hell isn’t the kind of plan you come up with sober, I can tell you that.”
Rin crossed her arms tightly against her chest. Kitay wasn’t saying anything she hadn’t already considered. What could anyone predict about maddened souls who had been entombed for years? The shamans of the Chuluu Korikh might do nothing. They might destroy half the country out of spite.
But Altan was certain they would fight for him.
They have no right to begrudge the Empress, Altan had said. All shamans know the risks when they journey to the gods. Everyone in the Cike knows that at the end of the line, they are destined for the Stone Mountain.
And the alternative was the extermination of every Nikara alive. The massacre of Golyn Niis made it obvious that the Federation did not want to take any prisoners. They wanted the massive piece of land that was the Nikara Empire. They were not interested in cohabitation with its former occupants. She knew the risks, and she had weighed them and concluded that she didn’t care. She had thrown her lot in with Altan, for better or worse.
“You can’t change my mind,” she said. “I’m telling you this as a favor. When we come out of that mountain, I don’t know how much control we’ll have, only that we’ll be powerful. Do not try to stop us. Do not try to join us. When we come, you should flee.”
“The rendezvous point will be at the base of the Kukhonin Mountains,” Altan told the assembled Cike. “If we don’t meet you there in seven days’ time, assume we were killed. Do not go inside the mountain yourselves. Wait for a bird from Qara and do as the message commands. Chaghan is commander in my stead.”
“Where is Chaghan?” Unegen ventured to ask.
“With Qara.” Altan’s face betrayed nothing. “They’ve gone north on my orders. You’ll know when they’re back.”
“When will that be?”
“When they’ve done their job.”
Rin waited by their horse, watched Altan speaking with a self-assured aura that she had not seen since Sinegard. Altan, as he presented himself now, was not that broken boy with the opium pipe. He was not the despairing Speerly reliving the genocide of his people. He was not a victim. Altan was different now than he had been even in Khurdalain. He was no longer frustrated, pacing around his office like a cornered animal, no longer constrained under Jun’s thumb. Altan had orders now, a mission, a singular purpose. He didn’t have to hold back anymore. He had been let off his leash. Altan was going to take his anger to a final, terrible conclusion.
She had no doubts they would succeed. She just didn’t know if the country would survive his plan.
“Good luck,” said Enki. “Say hi to Feylen for us.”
“Great guy,” Unegen said wistfully. “Until, you know, he tried to flatten everything in a twenty-mile radius.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” said Ramsa. “It was only ten.”
They rode as fast as the old gelding would allow. At midday they passed a boulder with two lines etched into its side. She would have missed it if Altan had not pointed it out.
“Chaghan’s work,” said Altan. “Proof that the way is safe.”
“You sent Chaghan here?”
“Yes. Before we left the Night Castle for Khurdalain.”
“Why?”
“Chaghan and I . . . Chaghan had a theory,” said Altan. “About the Trifecta. Before Sinegard, when he realized Tyr had died, he’d seen something on the spirit horizon. He thought he’d seen the Gatekeeper. He saw the same disturbance a week later, and then it disappeared. He thought the Gatekeeper must have intentionally closed himself in the Chuluu Korikh. We thought we might extract him, find out the truth—maybe discover the truth behind the Trifecta, see what’s happened to the Gatekeeper and the Emperor, find out what the Empress did to them. Chaghan didn’t know I wanted to free anyone else.”
“You lied to him.”
Altan shrugged. “Chaghan believes what he wants to believe.”
“Chaghan also . . . He said . . .” She trailed off, unsure of how to phrase her question.
“What?” Altan demanded.
“He said they trained you like a dog. At Sinegard.”
Altan laughed drily. “He phrased it like that, did he?”
“He said they fed you opium.”
Altan stiffened.
“They trained soldiers at Sinegard,” he said. “With me, they did their job.”
They might have done their job too well, Rin thought. Like the Cike, the masters at Sinegard had conjured a more frightening power than they were equipped to handle. They’d done more than train a Speerly. They’d created an avenger.
Altan was a commander who would burn down the world to destroy his enemy.
This should have bothered her. Three years ago, if she had known what she knew about Altan now, she would have run in the opposite direction.
But now, she had seen and suffered too much. The Empire didn’t need someone reasonable. It needed someone mad enough to try to save it.
They stopped riding when it became too dark to see the path in front of them. They had ventured onto a trail so lightly trodden it could hardly be called a road, and their horse could have easily cut its hooves on a jagged rock or sent them tumbling into a ravine. Their gelding staggered when they dismounted. Altan poured out a pan of water for it, but only after Rin’s prodding did it begin to halfheartedly drink.
“He’ll die if we ride him any harder,” Rin said. She knew very little about horses, but she could tell when an animal was on the verge of collapse. One of the military steeds at Khurdalain, perhaps, could have easily made the trip, but this horse was a miserable pack animal—an old beast so thin its ribs showed through its matted coat.
“We just need him for one more day,” said Altan. “He can die after.”
Rin fed the gelding a handful of oats from their pack. Meanwhile Altan built their camp with austere, methodical efficiency. He collected fallen pine needles and dry leaves to insulate against the cold. He formed a frame out of broken tree limbs and draped a spare cloak over it to shield against overnight snowfall. He pulled from his pack dry kindling and oil, quickly dug a pit, and arranged the flammables inside. He extended his hand. A flare caught immediately. Casually, as if he were doing nothing harder than waving a fan, Altan increased the volume of the flame until they were sitting before a roaring bonfire.
Rin held her hands out, let the heat seep through into her bones. She hadn’t noticed how cold she’d become over the day; she realized she hadn’t been able to feel her toes until now.
“Are you warm?” Altan asked.
She nodded quickly. “Thanks.”
He watched her in silence for a moment. She felt the heat of his gaze on her, and tried not to flush. She was not used to receiving Altan’s full attention; he had been distracted with Chaghan ever since Khurdalain, ever since their falling-out. But things were reversed now. Chaghan had abandoned Altan, and Rin stood by his side. She felt a thrill of vindictive joy when she considered this. Suddenly guilty, she tried to quash it down.
“You’ve been to the mountain before?”
“Only once,” Altan said. “A year ago. I helped Tyr bring Feylen in.”
“Feylen’s the one who went crazy?”
“They all go crazy, in the end,” he said. “The Cike die in battle, or they get immured. Most commanders assume their title when they’ve disposed of their old master. If Tyr hadn’t died, I probably would have locked him in myself. It’s always a pain when it happens.”
“Why aren’t they just killed?” she asked.
“You can’t kill a shaman who’s been fully possessed,” said Altan. “When that happens, the shaman isn’t human anymore. They’re not mortal. They’re vessels of the divine. You can behead them, stab them, hang them, but the body will keep moving. You dismember the body, and still the pieces will skitter to rejoin the others. The best you can do is bind them, incapacitate them, and overpower them until you get them into the mountain.”
Rin imagined herself bound and blindfolded, dragged involuntarily along this same mountain path into an eternal stone prison. She shuddered. She could understand this sort of cruelty from the Federation, but from her own commander?
“And you’re all right with that?”
“Of course I’m not all right with that,” he snapped. “But it’s the job. It’s my job. I’m supposed to bring the Cike to the mountain when they’ve become unfit to serve. The Cike controls itself. The Cike is the Empire’s way of eliminating the threat of rogue shamans.”
Altan twisted his fingers together. “Every Cike commander is charged with two things: to obey the will of the Empress, and to cull the force when it’s time. Jun was right. There’s no place for the Cike in modern warfare. We’re too small. We can’t achieve anything a well-trained Militia force couldn’t. Fire powder, cannons, and steel—these things win wars, not a handful of shamans. The only unique role of the Cike is to do what no other military force can do. We can subdue ourselves, which is the only reason why we’re allowed to exist.”
Rin thought of Suni—poor, gentle, and horrifically strong Suni, who was so clearly unstable. How long before he would meet the same fate that had befallen Feylen? When would Suni’s madness outweigh his usefulness to the Empire?
“But I won’t be like the commanders of before,” Altan said. His fingers clenched to form fists. “I won’t turn from my people because they’ve drawn more power than they should have. How is that fair? Suni and Baji were sent to the Baghra desert because Jiang got scared of them. That’s what he does—erases his mistakes, runs from them. But Tyr trained them instead, gave them back a shred of rationality. So there must be a way of taming the gods. The Feylen that I knew would not kill his own people. There must be a way to bring him back from madness. There has to be.”
He spoke with such conviction. He looked so sure, so absolutely sure that he could control this sleeping army the same way he had calmed Suni in that mess hall, had brought him back to the world of mortals with nothing more than whispers and words.
She forced herself to believe him, because the alternative was too terrible to comprehend.
They reached the Chuluu Korikh on the afternoon of the second day, hours earlier than they had planned. Altan was pleased at this; he was pleased at everything today, forging ahead with an ecstatic, giddy energy. He acted as if he had waited years for this day. For all Rin knew, he had.
When the terrain became too treacherous to keep riding, they dismounted and let the animal go. The gelding strode away with a grievous air to find somewhere to die.
They hiked for the better part of the afternoon. The ice and snow thickened the higher up they climbed. Rin was reminded of the treacherously icy stairs at Sinegard, how one misstep could mean a shattered spine. But here, no first-years had scattered salt across the ice to make the ground safe. If they slipped now, they were guaranteed a quick, icy death.
Altan used his trident as a staff, stabbing at the ground in front of him before he stepped forward. Rin followed gingerly in the path he had marked as safe. She suggested that they simply melt the ice with Speerly fire. Altan tried it. It took too long.
The sky had just begun to darken when Altan paused before a stretch of wall.
“Wait. This is it.”
Rin froze in her steps, teeth chattering madly. She glanced around. She could see no marker, no indication that this was the special entrance. But Altan sounded certain.
He backtracked several steps and then began scrubbing at the mountainside, wiping off snow to get at the smooth stone face underneath. He grumbled with exasperation and pressed a flaming hand against the rock. The fire gradually melted a clean circle in the ice with Altan’s hand at its center.
Rin could now see a crevice carved into the rock. It had been barely visible under a thick coat of snow and ice. A traveler could have walked past it twenty times and never seen it.
“Tyr said to stop when we reached the crag that looked like an eagle’s beak,” Altan said. He gestured toward the precipice they stood upon. It did, in fact, look like the profile of one of Qara’s birds. “I almost forgot.”
Rin dug two strips of dry cloth out of her travel sack, dribbled a vial of oil over them, and busied herself with wrapping the heads of a couple of wooden sticks. “You’ve never been inside?”
“Tyr had me wait outside,” said Altan. He stood back from the entrance. He had cleanly melted the ice away from the stone face, revealing a circular door embedded in the side of the mountain. “The only person alive who’s ever been inside is Chaghan. I’ve no idea how he got this door open. You ready?”
Rin yanked the last cloth knot tight with her teeth and nodded.
Altan turned around, braced his back against the stone door, bent his legs, and pushed. His face strained with the effort.
For a second nothing happened. Then, with a ponderous screech, the rock slid at an angle into its stone bed.
When the rock ground to a halt, Rin and Altan stood before the great maw of darkness. The tunnel was so black inside it seemed to swallow the sunlight whole. Glancing into the dark interior, Rin felt a sense of dread that had nothing to do with the darkness. Inside this mountain, there was no calling the Phoenix. They would have no access to the Pantheon. No way to call the power.
“Last chance to turn back,” said Altan.
She scoffed, handed him a torch, and strode forward.
Rin had barely made it ten feet in when she took one step too wide. The dark passageway turned out to be perilously narrow. She felt something crumble under her foot, and scrambled back against the wall. She held her torch out over the precipice and was immediately overcome with a horrible sense of vertigo. There was no visible bottom to the abyss; it dropped away into nothing.
“It’s hollow all the way down,” said Altan, standing close behind her. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Stick to me. Watch your feet. Chaghan said we’d reach a wider platform in about twenty paces.”
She pressed herself against the cliff wall and let Altan squeeze past her, following him gingerly down the steps.
“What else did Chaghan say?”
“That we would find this.” Altan held out his torch.
A lone pulley lift hung in the middle of the mountain. Rin held her torch out as far as it would go, and the light illuminated something black and shiny on the platform surface.
“That’s oil. This is a lamp,” Rin realized. She drew her arm back.
“Careful,” Altan hissed just as Rin flung her torch out onto the lift.
The ancient oil blazed immediately to life. Fire snaked through the darkness across predetermined oil patterns in a hypnotizing sequence, revealing several similar pulley lamps hanging at various heights. Only after several long minutes was the entire mountain illuminated, revealing an intricate architecture to the stone prison. Below the passageway where they stood, Rin could see circles upon circles of plinths, extending down as far as the light reached. Around and around the inside of the mountain went a spiraling pathway that led to countless stone tombs.
The pattern was oddly familiar. Rin had seen this before.
It was a stone version of the Pantheon in miniature, multiplied in a spiraling helix. It was a perverse Pantheon, for the gods were not alive here but arrested in suspended animation.
Rin felt a sudden burst of panic. She took a deep breath, trying to dispel the feeling, but the overwhelming sense of suffocation only grew.
“I feel it, too,” Altan said quietly. “It’s the mountain. We’ve been sealed off.”
Back in Tikany, Rin had once fallen out of a tree and hit her head so hard against the ground that she lost her hearing temporarily. She’d seen Kesegi shouting at her, gesturing at his throat, but nothing had come through. It was the same here. Something was missing. She had been denied access to something.
She could not imagine what it was like to be trapped here for years, decades upon decades, unable to die but unable to leave the material world. This was a place that did not allow dreaming. This was a place of never-ending nightmares.
What a horrible fate to be entombed here.
Rin’s fingers brushed against something round. Under the pressure of her touch, it shifted and began to turn. She shone her torch on it and signaled for Altan’s attention.
“Look.”
It was a stone cylinder. Rin was reminded of the prayer wheels in front of the pagoda at the Academy. But this cylinder was much larger, rising up to her shoulder. Rin held the torch up to the stone and examined it closely. Deep grooves had been cut into its sides. She placed a hand on one side and dug her heels into the dirt, pushed hard.
With a screech that sounded like a scream, the wheel began to turn.
The grooves were words. No—names. Names upon names, each one followed by a string of numbers. It was a record. A registry of every soul that had been sealed inside the Chuluu Korikh.
There must have been a hundred names carved into that wheel.
Altan held the torch up to her right. “It’s not the only one.”
She looked up and saw that the fire illuminated another record wheel.
Then another. Then another.
They stretched through the entire first tier of the Stone Mountain.
Thousands and thousands of names. Names dating past the reign of the Dragon Emperor. Names dating past the Red Emperor himself.
Rin almost staggered at the significance.
There were people here who had not been conscious since the birth of the Nikara Empire.
“The investiture of the gods,” said Altan. He was trembling. “The sheer power in this mountain . . . no one could stop them, not even the Federation . . .”
And not even us, Rin thought.
If they woke the Chuluu Korikh, they would have an army of madmen, of primordial spigots of psychic energy. This was an army they would not be able to control. This was an army that could raze the world.
Rin traced her fingers against the first record wheel, the one closest to the entrance.
At the top, in very careful, deliberate writing, was the most recent entry.
She recognized that handwriting.
“I found him,” she said.
“Who, the Gatekeeper?” Altan looked confused.
“It’s him,” she said. “Of course it’s him.”
She ran her fingers over the engraved stone, and a deep flood of relief shot through her.
Jiang Ziya.
She had found him, finally found him. Her master was sealed inside one of these plinths. She grabbed the torch back from Altan and started at a run down the steps. Whispers echoed past her as she ran. She thought she could sense things coming through from the other side, the things that had been whispering through the void Jiang summoned at Sinegard.
She felt in the air an overwhelming want.
They must have immured the shamans starting at the bottom of the prison. Jiang could not be far from where they stood. Rin ran faster, felt the stone scrape under her feet. Up before her, her torch illuminated a plinth carved in the image of a stooped gatekeeper. She came to a sudden halt.
This had to be Jiang.
Altan caught up to her. “Don’t just take off like that.”
“He’s here,” she said, shining her torch up at the plinth. “He’s in there.”
“Move,” said Altan.
She had barely stepped out of the way when Altan slammed the end of his trident into the plinth.
When the rubble cleared, Jiang’s serene form was revealed under a layer of crumbling dust. He lay perfectly still against the rock, the sides of his mouth curved faintly upward as if he found something deeply amusing. He might have been sleeping.
He opened his eyes, looked them up and down, and blinked. “You might have knocked first.”
Rin stepped toward him. “Master?”
Jiang tilted his head sideways. “Have you gotten taller?”
“We’re here to rescue you,” said Rin, although the words sounded stupid as soon as she uttered them. No one could have forced Jiang into the mountain. He must have wanted to be there.
But she didn’t care why he had come here; she had found him, she had released him, she had his attention now. “We need your help. Please.”
Jiang stepped forward out of the stone and shook his limbs as if working out the kinks. He brushed the dust meticulously off his robes. Then he uttered mildly, “You should not be here. It’s not your time.”
“You don’t understand—”
“And you do not listen.” He was not smiling anymore. “The Seal is breaking. I can feel it—it’s almost gone. If I leave this mountain, all sorts of terrible things will come into your world.”
“So it’s true,” Altan said. “You’re the Gatekeeper.”
Jiang looked irritated. “What did I just say about not listening?”
But Altan was flushed with excitement. “You are the most powerful shaman in Nikara history! You can unlock this entire mountain! You could command this army!”
“That’s your plan?” Jiang gaped at him as if in disbelief that anyone could be this stupid. “Are you mad?”
“We . . .” Altan faltered, then regained his composure. “I’m not—”
Jiang buried his face in his palm, like an exasperated schoolteacher. “The boy wants to set everyone in this mountain free. The boy wants to unleash the contents of the Chuluu Korikh on the world.”
“It’s that, or let Nikan fall,” Altan snapped.
“Then let it.”
“What?”
“You don’t know what the Federation is capable of,” Rin said. “You didn’t see what they did to Golyn Niis.”
“I saw more than you think,” said Jiang. “But this is not the way. This path leads only to darkness.”
“How can there be more darkness?” she screamed in frustration. Her voice echoed off the cavernous walls. “How can things possibly get worse than this? Even you took the risks, you opened the void . . .”
“That was my mistake,” Jiang said regretfully, like a child who had been chastened. “I never should have done that. I should have let them take Sinegard.”
“Don’t you dare,” Rin hissed. “You opened the void, you let the beasts through, and you ran and hid here to let us deal with the consequences. When are you going to stop hiding? When are you going to stop being such a damn coward? What are you running from?”
Jiang looked pained. “It’s easy to be brave. Harder to know when not to fight. I’ve learned that lesson.”
“Master, please . . .”
“If you unleash this on Mugen, you will ensure that this war will continue for generations,” said Jiang. “You will do more than burn entire provinces to the ground. You will rip apart the very fabric of the universe. These are not men entombed in this mountain; these are gods. They will treat the material world as a plaything. They will shape nature according to their will. They will level mountains and redraw rivers. They will turn the mortal world into the same chaotic flow of primal forces that constitutes the Pantheon. But in the Pantheon, the gods are balanced. Life and death, light and dark—each of the sixty-four entities has its opposite. Bring the gods into your world, and that balance will shatter. You will turn your world to ash, and only demons will live in the rubble.”
When Jiang finished speaking, the silence rang heavily in the darkness.
“I can control them,” said Altan, though even to Rin he sounded hesitant, like a boy insisting to himself that he could fly. “There are men in those bodies. The gods can’t run free. I’ve done it with my people. Suni should have been locked up here years ago, but I’ve tamed him, I can talk them back from the madness—”
“You are mad.” Jiang’s voice was almost a whisper, containing as much awe as disbelief. “You’re blinded by your own desire for vengeance. Why are you doing this?” He reached out and grasped Altan’s shoulder. “For the Empire? For love of the country? Which is it, Trengsin? What story have you told yourself?”
“I want to save Nikan,” Altan insisted. He repeated in a strained voice, as if trying to convince himself, “I want to save Nikan.”
“No, you don’t,” said Jiang. “You want to raze Mugen.”
“They’re the same thing!”
“There is a world of difference between them, and the fact that you don’t see that is why you can’t do this. Your patriotism is a farce. You dress up your crusade with moral arguments, when in truth you would let millions die if it means you get your so-called justice. That’s what will happen if you open the Chuluu Korikh, you know,” said Jiang. “It won’t be just Mugen that pays to sate your need for retribution, but anyone unlucky enough to be caught in this storm of insanity. Chaos does not discriminate, Trengsin, and that’s why this prison was designed to never be unlocked.” He sighed. “But of course, you don’t care.”
Altan could not have looked more shocked if Jiang had struck him across the face.
“You have not cared about anything for a very long time,” Jiang continued. He regarded Altan with pity. “You are broken. You’re hardly yourself anymore.”
“I’m trying to save my country,” Altan reiterated hollowly. “And you’re a coward.”
“I am terrified,” Jiang acknowledged. “But only because I’m starting to remember who I once was. Don’t go down that path. Your country is ash. You can’t bring it back with blood.”
Altan gaped at him, unable to respond.
Jiang tilted his head to the side. “Irjah knew, didn’t he?”
Altan blinked rapidly. He looked terrified. “What? Irjah didn’t—Irjah never—”
“Oh, he knew.” Jiang sighed. “He must have known. Daji would have told him—Daji saw what I didn’t, Daji would have made sure Irjah knew how to keep you tame.”
Rin looked between them, confused. The blood had drained from Altan’s face; his features twisted with rage. “How dare you—you dare allege—”
“It’s my fault,” Jiang said. “I should have tried harder to help you.”
Altan’s voice cracked. “I didn’t need to be helped.”
“You needed it more than anything,” Jiang said sadly. “I’m so sorry. I should have fought to save you. You were a scared little boy, and they turned you into a weapon. And now . . . now you’re lost. But not her. She can still be saved. Don’t burn her with yourself.”
They both looked to her then.
Rin glanced between them. So this was her choice. The paths before her were clear. Altan or Jiang. Commander or master. Victory and revenge, or . . . or whatever Jiang had promised her.
But what had he ever promised her? Only wisdom. Only understanding. Enlightenment. But those meant only further warnings, petty excuses to hold her back from exercising a power that she knew she could access . . .
“I taught you better than this.” Jiang put a hand on her shoulder. He sounded as if he were pleading. “Didn’t I? Rin?”
He could have helped them. He could have stopped the massacre at Golyn Niis. He could have saved Nezha.
But Jiang had hidden. His country had needed him, and he had fled to ensconce himself here, without any regard for those he left behind.
He had abandoned her.
He hadn’t even said goodbye.
But Altan . . . Altan had not given up on her.
Altan had verbally abused her and hit her, but he had faith in her power. Altan had only ever wanted to make her stronger.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “But I have my orders.”
Jiang exhaled, and his hand fell away from her shoulder. As always under his gaze, she felt as if she were suffocating, as if he could see through to every part of her. He weighed her with those pale eyes then, and she failed him.
And even though she had made her choice, she couldn’t bear his disappointment. She looked away.
“No, I am sorry,” Jiang said. “I’m so sorry. I tried to warn you.”
He stepped backward over the ruins of his plinth. He closed his eyes.
“Master, please—”
He began to chant. At his feet the broken stone began to move as if liquid, assuming again the form of a smooth, unbroken plinth that built slowly from the ground up.
Rin ran forward. “Master!”
But Jiang was still, silent. Then the stone covered his face completely.
“He’s wrong.”
Altan’s voice trembled, whether from fear or naked rage, she didn’t know. “That isn’t why—I’m not . . . We don’t need him. We’ll wake the others. They’ll fight for me. And you—you’ll fight for me, won’t you? Rin?”
“Of course I will,” she whispered, but Altan was already bashing at the next plinth with his trident, slamming the metal down over and over with naked desperation.
“Wake up,” he shouted, voice cracking. “Wake up, come on . . .”
The shaman in the plinth had to be Feylen, the mad and murderous one. That should have posed a deterrent, but Altan certainly didn’t seem to care as he slammed his trident down again into the thin stone veneer that lay over Feylen’s face.
The rocks came crumbling down, and the second shaman woke.
Rin held her torch out hesitantly. When she saw the figure inside she cringed in revulsion.
Feylen was barely recognizable as human. Jiang had only just immured himself; his body was still passably that of a man, displaying no signs of decay. But Feylen . . . Feylen’s body was a dead one, grayed and hardened after months of entombment without nourishment or oxygen. He had not decayed, but he had petrified.
Blue veins protruded against ash-gray skin. Rin doubted any blood still flowed through those veins.
Feylen’s build was slender, thin and stooped, and his face looked like it might have been pleasant once. But now his skin was pulled taut over his cheekbones, eyes sunken in deep craters in his skull.
And then he opened his eyes, and Rin’s breath hitched in her throat.
Feylen’s eyes glowed brilliantly in the darkness, an unnerving blue like two fragments of the sky.
“It’s me,” Altan said. “Trengsin.” She could hear the way he fought to keep his voice level. “Do you remember me?”
“We remember voices,” Feylen said slowly. His voice was scratchy from months without use; it sounded like a steel blade dragged against the ancient stone of the mountain. He cocked his head at an unnatural angle, as if trying to tip maggots out of his ear. “We remember fire. And we remember you, Trengsin. We remember your hand across our mouth and your other hand at our throat.”
The way Feylen spoke made Rin clench the hilt of her sword with fear. He didn’t speak like a man who had fought by Altan’s side.
He referred to himself as we.
Altan seemed to have realized this, too. “Do you remember who you are?”
Feylen frowned at this as if he had forgotten. He pondered a long time before he rasped out, “We are a spirit of the wind. We may take the body of a dragon or the body of a man. We rule the skies of this world. We carry the four winds in a bag and we fly as our whims take us.”
“You’re Feylen of the Cike. You serve the Empress, and you served under Tyr’s command. I need your help,” Altan said. “I need you to fight for me again.”
“To . . . fight?”
“There’s a war,” Altan said, “and we need the power of the gods.”
“The power of the gods,” Feylen drawled slowly. Then he laughed.
It wasn’t a human laugh. It was a high-pitched echo that sounded off the mountain walls like the shrieking of bats.
“We fought for you the first time,” he said. “We fought for the Empire. For your thrice-damned Empress. What did that get us? A slap on the back, and a trip to this mountain.”
“You did try to send the Night Castle tumbling down a cliff,” Altan pointed out.
“We were confused. We didn’t know where we were.” Feylen sounded rueful. “But no one helped us . . . no one calmed us. No, instead you helped put us in here. When Tyr subdued us, you held the rope. You dragged us here like cattle. And he stood there and watched the stone close across our face.”
“That wasn’t my decision,” Altan said. “Tyr thought—”
“Tyr got scared. The man asked for our power, and backed off when it became too much.”
Altan swallowed. “I didn’t want this for you.”
“You promised us you wouldn’t hurt us. I thought you cared about us. We were scared. We were vulnerable. And you bound us in the night, you subdued us with your flames . . . can you imagine the pain? The terror? All we ever did was fight for you, and you repaid us with eternal torture.”
“We put you to sleep,” Altan said. “We gave you rest.”
“Rest? Do you think this is rest?” Feylen hissed. “Do you have any idea what this mountain is like? Try stepping into that stone, see if you can last even an hour. Gods were not meant to be contained, least of all us. We are the wind. We blow in each and every direction. We obey no master. Do you know what torment this is? Do you know what the boredom is like?”
He stepped forward and opened his hands out toward Altan.
Rin tensed, but nothing happened.
Perhaps the god Feylen had summoned was capable of immense power. Perhaps he could have leveled villages, might have ripped Altan apart under normal circumstances. But they were inside the mountain. Whatever Feylen was capable of, whatever he would have done, the gods had no power here.
“I know how terrible it must be to be cut off from the Pantheon,” said Altan. “But if you fight for me, if you promise to contain yourself, then you never have to suffer that again.”
“We have become divine,” said Feylen. “Do you think we care what happens to mortals?”
“I don’t need you to care about mortals,” said Altan. “I need you to remember me. I need the power of your god, but I need more the man inside. I need the person in control. I know you’re in there, Feylen.”
“In control? You speak to us of control?” Feylen gnashed his teeth when he spoke, like every word was a curse. “We cannot be controlled like pack animals for your use. You’re in over your head, little Speerly. You’ve brought down forces you don’t understand into your pathetic little material world, and your world would be infinitely more interesting if someone smashed it up for a bit.”
The color drained from Altan’s face.
“Rin, get back,” he said quietly.
Jiang was right. Chaghan had been right. An entire army of these creatures would have spelled the end of the world.
She had never felt so wrong.
We can’t let this thing leave the mountain.
The same thought seemed to strike Feylen at precisely that moment. He looked between them and the stream of light two tiers up, through which they could just hear the wind howling outside, and he smiled crookedly.
“Ah,” he said. “Left it wide open, haven’t you?”
His luminous eyes came alive with malicious glee, and he regarded the exit with the yearning of a drowning man desperate to come up for air.
“Feylen, please.” Altan stretched out a hand, and his voice was quiet when he spoke to Feylen, as if he thought he could calm him the way he had calmed Suni.
“You cannot threaten us. We can rip you apart,” sneered Feylen.
“I know you can,” said Altan. “But I trust that you won’t. I’m trusting the person inside.”
“You are a fool to think me human.”
“Me,” said Altan. “You said me.”
Feylen’s face spasmed. The blue light dimmed from his eyes. His features morphed just so slightly; the sneer disappeared, and his mouth worked as if trying to decide what commands to obey.
Altan lifted his trident out to the side, far away from Feylen. Then, with a slow deliberateness, he flung the weapon away from him. It clattered against the wall, echoed in the silence of the mountain.
Feylen stared at the weapon in wide-eyed disbelief.
“I’m trusting you with my life,” said Altan. “I know you’re in there, Feylen.”
Slowly, he stretched his hand out again.
And Feylen grasped it.
The contact sent tremors through Feylen’s body. When he looked up, he had that same terrified expression she’d seen in Suni. His eyes were wide, dark and imploring, like a child seeking a protector; a lost soul desperately seeking an anchor back to the mortal world.
“Altan?” he whispered.
“I’m here.” Altan walked forward. As before, he approached the god without fear, despite full knowledge of what it could do to him.
“I can’t die,” Feylen whispered. His voice contained none of that grating quality now; it was tremulous, so vulnerable there was no doubt that this Feylen was human. “It’s awful, Trengsin. Why can’t I die? I should never have summoned that god . . . Our minds are meant to be our own, not shared with these things . . . I do not live here in this mountain . . . but I can’t die.”
Rin felt sick.
Jiang was right. The gods had no place in their world. No wonder the Speerlies had driven themselves mad. No wonder Jiang was so terrified of pulling the gods down into the mortal realm.
The Pantheon was where they belonged; the Pantheon was where they should stay. This was a power mankind never should have meddled with.
What were they thinking? They should leave, now, while Feylen was still under control; they should pull the stone door closed so that he could never escape.
But Altan showed none of her fear. Altan had his soldier back.
“I can’t let you die yet,” Altan said. “I need you to fight for me. Can you do that?”
Feylen had not let go of Altan’s arm; he drew him closer, as if into an embrace. He leaned in and brushed his lips against Altan’s ear, and whispered so that Rin could barely hear what he said: “Kill yourself, Trengsin. Die while you still can.”
His eyes met Rin’s over Altan’s shoulder. They glinted a bright blue.
“Altan!” Rin screamed.
And Feylen wrenched his commander across the plinth and flung him toward the abyss.
It was not a strong throw. Feylen’s muscles were atrophied from months of disuse; he moved clumsily, like newborn fawn, a god tottering about in a mortal body.
But Altan careened wildly over the side, flailing in the air for balance, and Feylen pushed past him and scrambled up the stone steps toward the exit. His face was wild with a gleeful malice, ecstatic.
Rin threw herself across the stone; she landed stomach-first on floor, arms extended, and the next thing she felt was terrible pain as Altan’s fingers closed around her wrist just before he plunged into the darkness.
His weight wrenched her arm down. She cried out in agony as her elbow slammed against stone.
But then Altan’s other arm shot up from the darkness. She strained down. Their fingers clasped together.
Rocks clattered off the edge of the precipice, falling away into the abyss, but Altan hung steady by both of her arms. They slid forward and for one sick moment she feared his weight might pull the both of them over the edge, but then her foot caught in a groove and they came to a stop.
“I’ve got you,” she panted.
“Let go,” Altan said.
“What?”
“I’m going to swing myself up,” he said. “Let my left arm go.”
She obeyed.
Altan kicked himself to the side to generate momentum and then threw his other hand up to grasp the edge. She lay straining against the floor, legs digging into the stone to keep herself from sliding forward while he pulled himself over the edge of the precipice. He slammed one arm over the top and dug his elbow into the floor. Grunting, he hauled his legs over the edge in a single fluid movement.
Sobbing with relief, Rin helped him to his feet, but he brushed her off.
“Feylen,” he hissed, and set out at an uneven sprint up the stone pathway.
Rin followed him, but it was pointless. When they ran, the only footsteps they could hear were their own, because Feylen had long disappeared out the mouth of the Chuluu Korikh.
They’d given him free rein in the world.
But Altan had overpowered him once. Surely they could do so again. They had to.
They stumbled out the stone door and skidded to a halt before a wall of steel.
Federation soldiers thronged the mountainside.
Their general barked a command and the soldiers pressed forward with their shields linked to create a barrier, backing Rin and Altan inside the stone mountain.
She caught Altan’s stricken expression for a brief moment before he was buried beneath a crowd of armor and swords.
She had no time to wonder why the Federation soldiers were there or how they had known to arrive; all questions disappeared from her mind with the immediacy of combat. The fighting instinct took over—the world became a matter of blades and parries, just another melee—
Yet even as she drew her sword she knew it was hopeless.
The Federation had chosen precisely the right place to kill a Speerly.
Altan and Rin had no advantage in here. The Phoenix could not reach them through the thick walls of stone. Swallowing the poppy would be useless. They might pray to their god, but no one would answer.
A pair of gauntleted arms reached around Rin from behind, pinning her arms to her sides. From the corner of her eye she saw Altan backed against the wall, no fewer than five blades at his neck.
He might have been the best martial artist in Nikan. But without his fire, without his trident, he was still only one man.
Rin jammed her elbow into her captor’s stomach, wriggled free, and whipped her sword outward at the nearest soldier. Their blades clashed; she landed a lucky, wild swing. He tumbled, yelling, into the abyss with her sword embedded in his knee. Rin made a grab for her weapon, but it was too late.
The next soldier swung wide overhead. She ducked into close quarters, reaching for the knife in her belt.
The soldier cracked the hilt of his blade down on her shoulder and sent her sprawling across the floor. She fumbled blindly against the rock.
Then someone slammed a shield against the back of her head.