Steles of the Sky (25 page)

Hsiung eased his pack straps with his thumbs. He wasn’t sure why he kept the thing, except as a sort of superstitious talisman. He’d need it when he headed back to Temur, Hrahima, and Samarkar. If he were ever permitted to.

It was unwise to dwell on eventualities. Here and now was the only world. Anticipation bred misery.

There was only the running. When he arrived, he would be another person, and it would be another time. That person would do what he had to do. And suffer what he had to suffer in recompense.

The steps were hard. While not so steep as the slope behind Hsiung, they were steeper than the switchbacks that climbed it. He jogged up slowly, his knees grinding. When he came to the top—at last, he let himself pause. He rested his hands on his thighs, chest heaving. A slower climber trudged past, a carry-basket on his shoulders, contents concealed beneath a patterned cotton cloth.

Hsiung realized that he had not allowed himself to pause for breath before this because he was afraid that if he did, he would not continue.

But now he could look forward and down, and see not just the road that led him home—what had been home, anyway; the last true home he had known—but the Wretched Mountain in its lone glory, veiled in the mists of a dozen waterfalls.

The valley was wet and sheltered, the purple-red leaves of the maples flocking its floor and walls as if they were pressed into the cup of a serving bowl. At the center rose the Wretched Mountain, a narrow spire of white stone blossoming from a narrower base to wider walls, like some trumpet mushroom of incomprehensible scale. All up its height trees clung to ledges, mosses dripped. At its ragged top, a forest no bigger than a
li
in diameter bloomed, seeming to slip down the convex dome like icing on a hot bun. Narrow waterfalls tumbled down the sides, casting the whole valley in mist and rainbows as the light of Hard-day refracted through them.

The waterfalls frothed and bubbled past the hanging buildings of the Wretched Mountain Temple Brotherhood. The monastery was comprised of a series of long, narrow pagodas, walled in a dark leafy green and roofed in fluted tiles the cinnabar-red of dragonscale. They clustered beneath the overhangs of that central mountain pillar, supported by chains and pilings that vanished into raw rock above and below. Their narrow balconies ran their lengths, the railings painted as red as the roofs. A series of sway-backed bridges connected each to the next. Hsiung could see figures in homespun robes moving along those bridges and balconies. The temple circumambulated the mountain, and the only access from the ground was via hanging stairs and ladders at the back. Some vagary of the wind brought to his ears the tolling of a great bell.

It was not the heaviest of the monastery’s bells, but Hsiung found it the sweetest. The Wretched Mountain Temple had over a hundred great bells, which were rung by striking them with hammers—hard work, and heavy, for some of the carillons went on for a tenth of the day. After so many years here, he knew almost every bell by its tone and its motto, which was also its name. The exceptions were
Ascension
and
I Raise Emperors,
which had not been rung in his lifetime.
Ascension
would peal at the creation of a new Sage, something that had not happened in a hundred years. And there had been no emperor to unite the Song principalities in nearly so long.

I Break the Lightning
rang against the destruction of storms, and
I Calm Ghosts
rang for funerals and in time of wars. This, however, was
Haven,
and it rang for homecomings … and with
I Calm Ghosts
for the dead.

Hsiung did not think it was ringing today for him. Unless in its latter capacity. Still, the crystalline peal went through him like a blade. He felt it in his chest, like a pressure inside his lungs. His heart pounding, he fought the urge to bolt.

Having come this far, he turned craven at the very gates of his failure. He stepped aside on the road, to let those who walked rather than dawdling pass him while he stared down into the green, glorious, mist-bannered valley. The patched cloth of his sleeve caught and rasped on the calluses of his fingers when he fretted it.
You should have done this years ago.

Enough.

Hsiung set his foot upon the road again.

*   *   *

There is no more melancholy sensation than returning as a stranger to a place once loved. The strangest thing of all was that no one seemed to notice Hsiung, or question his place—even as he made his way past the terraced orchards of the valley heights, the terraced farms of its lower reaches, the pastures and houses of its floor. Even as he made his way to the hanging ladder that reached from that floor to the entrance of the monastery.

It was guarded by two novices in brown-yellow robes so new they still smelled of the onion skins used to dye them, tied with undyed sashes with fraying, unhemmed ends. Their heads were cropped close; they looked at Hsiung’s frayed robe, galled feet, and the crop of resurgent stubble—almost a scruff, now; he should have shaved the night before—across his scalp with eyes as wide and black and stunned as those of startled deer. No one really expected the novices who did the boring work of standing at the bottoms of ladders to have to repel much more than curious children.

He bowed to them, reading awe in their startled glance at one another, the haste with which they bowed in return. When he straightened, he moved to the ladder as if he were, in truth, a mendicant returning after his journeyman interval of three years, seven, or twenty-one. As if he had every right to be here.

As if he had not fled in the night, before he could be found out and disciplined.

As if unbidden, he heard the voice of old Master War:
The strong warrior makes himself bigger than he is, Student Hsiung! The strong monk is a strong warrior, even if he never fights a battle. Never cringe; never bend; never go toward conflict without your spine being straight.

It shocked him out of his uncertainty and self-excoriation. But why would Master War help him now? The moment he had walked away from the Wretched Mountain, all the attention and advice of the masters had deserted him. He had been alone—

Master War helps you now because you have returned to your vows. It is never the task of the masters to offer comfort. Only peace, where peace is earned. Only strength.

I kept my vows. I have observed them in my exile. In my mendicancy.

Including the one to obedience?

Hsiung, dumbfounded beyond his oath of silence, simply bowed. The novices, thinking he bowed for them a second time, returned the gesture.

“Master—” said the slighter of the two. “Are the bells for you? Welcome home.” He stepped into Hsiung’s path, though Hsiung could see his uncertainty.

Hsiung touched his mouth and tilted his head. The novice put a hand to his cheek as if feeling the burn of embarrassment. He glanced at his companion, who was hanging back slightly. They had no confidence, and no understanding of their role. But that was what they were here to learn.

In his own way, Hsiung served the purpose of instructing them. Nature finds a use for everything.

Listening to the instructions of Master War, remembered after so long a lapse, he straightened his spine, set his foot upon the ladder, and began to climb.

The ladders themselves were an intentional obstacle. The rope rungs cupped a foot and trapped it. The ladders had a tendency to twist into helixes when climbed. And Hsiung had lost the knack of getting up them with grace. Still, somehow he managed, not daring to look for an instant as if he were not supremely confident. Not daring to look down, even when his foot kicked randomly, struggling to free itself from one rung and then groping for the next.

His long run and the privation had left him weak, and he had to pause several times on the climb to lace a calf through the ladder and rest. He hoped the novices would blame his incompetence on exhaustion. Although every returnee must struggle to regain these skills, he supposed. And unless they were raised sailors, the novices would not yet have mastered the art of climbing these ladders themselves.

Halfway up, the rhythm of it started to come back to him. His muscles, even tired, remembered. His body moved more naturally, and as he struggled less, he swung less. As he swung less, climbing became easier. He ascended the last half of the ladder in a third the time it had taken to ascend the first half, and with a quarter of the effort.

At last, he stood on the landing platform, only a last long stair carved into the stone—a pair of monks with crossbows at its top—between him and the balconies. The stair had staggered risers, divided right and left, so that each step up was only half the height it would otherwise have been. These monks were adult brothers, wearing sashes in the same deep mulberry as Brother Hsiung’s had once been, though he guessed it would be considerably less faded, darned, and threadbare. Hsiung tilted his head back and spread his hands, showing them empty. The blur of his vision precluded him recognizing either of these men and he suspected that, even if they had known him, they might not recognize him, either. Even as a novice—once he came back from starvation—he had been a bulky man, broad and thick. Now his robes hung on his raw bones like a puppet’s garments on its works. When he touched his face, he could feel bones where the plumpness of his cheeks had been. His eyes were probably sunken in pits, and the scruff of an untended beard obscured the lower half of his face.

Yes, he really should have shaved last night. It would have demonstrated respect.

This demonstrates haste.

One crossbowman raised his weapon. He called down a demand for explanation, terse and authoritarian, but not aggressive. The other lowered his weapon and backed away from the railing, vanishing within. Perhaps for instructions.

Moving slowly, ever so slowly, Hsiung touched his lips. He was not armed, but as he was dressed as a member of their order they would not expect him to need weapons greater than his feet and hands. He drew a line from nose to chin, indicating that his mouth was closed by a vow.

“Wait, then, brother,” the guard said, but he did not lower his weapon. “You are a returnee?”

Hsiung nodded.

“We will find someone who can identify you.”

That’s what I’m afraid of.
Hsiung nodded. Though his shoulders and upper arms ached from climbing, he accessed the discipline and serenity of his practice and training and endured it to keep his hands spread out and held high.

The running monk’s sandaled footsteps echoed along the walkway, heard very clearly from Hsiung’s position below it. He listened to them recede, and—within the limits of his discipline—more or less made himself comfortable.

The wait was not as long as he expected it to be. Certainly not as long as it should have been, based on his own memories of the time it had taken him to scramble from this very guard post to the masters’ quarters when he had been the monk bored and pretending serene contemplation and alertness on this very duty. Very quickly, however, a more measured tread returned—matched by a light, quick stride that even after years, Hsiung identified immediately. With mingled apprehension and relief.

His judgment was confirmed when the crossbowman jumped back from the railing, taking his eyes off Hsiung—the guard would be hearing about that, to his sorrow, before supper—and bowing so low his shaven forehead must have brushed the planks of the suspension decking.

“War-zi!”
Master War!

Hsiung could envision Master War’s silent sigh, although he could not see him. And the impatient gesture that would have preceded the crossbowman’s abrupt, mortified return to his post at the top of the stair, his bow once more leveled.

Hsiung took a breath.
What befalls is what befalls. You may only influence the moment. In the moment concentrate your efforts.

Brave thoughts, but what was left of his vision all but swam before him with apprehension. Master War was a dark shape at first, no more than a shadow, and then he was a blur behind the pall of Erem. Hsiung could not make his eyes resolve him, but he knew what he would see if he could. A man of middle years, moderate size, and wiry build, plump-cheeked and stern behind his moustache, Master War wore the unflattering mud-yellow robes of all the Wretched Mountain monks. His horny feet were thrust into black twine sandals, his arms folded inside his thick-hemmed sleeves. If Hsiung’s head had not been tilted back to regard those above him, it would have been just at the level of Master War’s toes and the angry red callus the sandal-strap had rubbed across the top of the left great one. But the sash that bound his waist was dyed near black with eldren-berries. It had rubbed purple friction-stains around the Master’s waist.

Hsiung might have hoped that this once, he might have seen Master War discommoded. At least slightly flustered. But Hsiung could tell from Master War’s posture that he did what he always did when one of his monks disappointed him. After a moment’s dispassionate consideration, the tips of his moustaches barely quivering, Master War let his arms slide out of his sleeves. He grasped the railing with the left one; the right ended in a smooth amputated stump.

“Brother Hsiung,” Master War said. “So you are returned to us at last.”

Hsiung bowed so low his forehead almost pressed his knees. He was surprised at how tightly his body tucked together without the bulk of his belly in the way. He stayed bent double until Master War sighed and tapped four fingers on the railing.

He said, “Well, then. I suppose you had better come inside.”

*   *   *

The interior of the temple had not changed—not even to become more shabby. During Brother Hsiung’s tenure, the woven mats had been changed every season, the paint refreshed, the lacings that held the slatted walls and floors together checked and renewed as well. It was not evident from below, but the buildings of the temple were bound together with cord, hanging from massive chains and pilings that anchored them to the rock above and below—as if they were incredibly elaborate and complex suspension bridges that people happened to live and pray and work inside.