Unsouled (Cradle Book 1) (16 page)

A man descended from the dark clouds like an angry messenger of the heavens. His whole being was defined by shades of black and white, from his black-veined white wings to his black-and-white striped hair. He wore black furs, and diamonds glistened everywhere he could fasten jewelry.

His right hand rested on the hilt of a silver-chased sword, and his left hand clutched a rough sack. Dark stains spread slowly over the bottom of the sack, giving Lindon a gruesome guess at its contents.

But his most startling feature, even considering the enormous wings that spread from his back, was the badge that rested against his furs. It was made of solid gold.

Lindon found himself unable to take a breath, and only part of it could be attributed to the man's oppressive atmosphere. Here, descending from the sky, was a Gold. A real Gold, in the flesh, someone who had mastered the secrets of madra beyond mortal dreams.

The arena filled with a sound like muffled drums as everyone, from every School and clan, fell to their knees. Even Sairus dropped to one knee, as was appropriate in the presence of a Gold, but the sight of him kneeling struck Lindon as
wrong
. Like an eternal mountain suddenly swaying with the wind.

“This one's humble name is Wei Jin Sairus, and he indeed has the honor to lead the Wei clan,” Sairus said. “May this one know the honored elder's name?”

The man of black-and-white landed before Sairus, his wings extending to fifteen feet on either side of the Patriarch. The shadow of his wings fell across Lindon's face, and though Lindon shivered, he didn't avert his eyes. Sudden though it was, this event was going to redefine the history of the Sacred Valley, and he couldn't miss it. No matter how the sight of a Gold turned his guts to water.

For a few seconds, the stranger stood over Sairus, his golden badge the only color on his person. He finally spoke in a casual tone, though wind aura carried his voice to every ear in the arena. “I am Li Markuth, Grand Patriarch of the Li Clan.”

Sairus' silver-maned head snapped up in shock. One breath later, Markuth's hand blurred, and a spray of blood slapped Lindon in the face.

He fell backwards, heart hammering, scraping warm and sticky blood away from his eyes. While he was blind, he couldn't fight the panic—he had to see, to know if the white-winged horror from the Li Clan was coming for him next.

The first sight to greet his eyes was the Patriarch's headless corpse collapsing to the stone, staining it red. Markuth had struck his head entirely off.

“The sins of the father pass to his sons, as the sins of the mother pass to her daughters,” Li Markuth intoned, wiping blood from his fingers on his dark furs. “To pay for the evil of your clan's founder, every beating heart from every living Wei descendant would not be enough. So I will settle for two.”

The Grand Patriarch spun around, thrusting his clawed hand into empty space.

Slowly, Wei Jin Sairus' body dissolved into foxfire. Even the blood on Lindon's face flared with heat before dissipating, revealing itself as a Forged dream.

Light lurched, and the Patriarch appeared out of nowhere. His head was attached, but now his chest was impaled on the Grand Patriarch's fist.

Sairus tried to speak, but Li Markuth tore his hand back, clutching what must have been the other man's heart. Blood dripped from the Grand Patriarch's gore-soaked fist.

Out of tricks, the Wei Patriarch fell to the stage and died.

Markuth opened his fist, and a heart dropped on top of the corpse with a splat. “One heart. I will collect the other in time.”

Black-and-white wings folded up behind the Grand Patriarch, trailing him like a leather cloak. A white-and-purple Remnant began to peel itself from the Patriarch’s corpse, but Markuth crushed it beneath his heel and the madra dispersed.

He looked straight at the box containing the elders from the clans and the guests from the four Schools. “I believe in solving my problems directly. Let it be known that I intend to claim the whole of Sacred Valley as my personal territory. If there are any challengers, step forward now. All at once, if you please. I will not waste my entire night fighting every Jade in the valley one at a time.”

Markuth lifted the bag that had been in his left hand since he'd descended, upending it over the stage. A pair of heads fell out, leaving a trail of blood as they rolled on the pale stone. He tossed the empty sack aside, but Lindon's gaze was fixed.

One of the heads belonged to a man he'd never seen before. He didn’t care about that. He was focused on the other head, the second head, the one whose features were veiled in long hair. Long brown hair.

His body shivered uncontrollably, madra racing through his veins in a pattern unrestrained by any cycling technique.

He knew who that head belonged to. He didn't need to see the face. He knew.

The world took on a feeling of unreality, as though he'd been struck by Kelsa's Empty Palm. It was too absurd. Just this morning he'd been preparing to fight a bunch of children and now...now Golds were descending from the sky? His mother was dead?

It was stupid, that was what it was. Idiotic and ridiculous. The world didn't work like this; the world made
sense
. Only dreams operated without rules or reason, and even his insane dreams of singing flowers and dancing clouds held more logic than this.

Jades began to gather at one end of the stage, old men and women from Kazan and Wei gathering together, mingling under both banners. They argued fiercely, none daring to walk up onstage, but they did gather. In ones and twos they hurried together, banding together to fight and die with pride.

Not all the Jades joined them. Some stayed in the stands, on their knees.

Markuth laughed, shaking droplets of blood from his fingers. “Is this it, then? Don't hold back, come up. I won't begin until you are ready.”

Hatred boiled up in Lindon, and he found himself wishing he could join the Jade elders. Even a Gold wasn't immortal. In fact...

The idea illuminated his soul like a sunrise. Li Markuth might be even more dependent on his madra than an ordinary person. If the legends were true, Gold bodies were partially
made
of madra, like a Remnant's.

What would an Empty Palm do against such a being?

Lindon would die landing that blow, but that wasn't worth consideration. He'd grown up with stories of mythical heroes who were killed trading strikes with a blood rival. If he succeeded here, he would live on forever in the myths of the Wei clan. It would be a good death. An honorable death. The death of a sacred artist.

If even the Empty Palm wasn't enough, Lindon had one more card to play. The hornet Remnants were still sealed in their jar beneath the stage, waiting for him to release them. If they could distract the Gold for even a breath, even the fragment of an instant, Lindon's life would be well spent.

The sense of unreality crashed in on Lindon once again, shattering his beautiful delusion. What was he thinking? Here
he
was, Wei Shi Lindon the Unsouled, considering throwing his life away in a battle against a Gold. It was a bad joke, or the fanciful poem of someone with too much ego. He couldn’t do anything. He would only die, with no plan or purpose whatsoever.

He stared at the Li Clan monster, and his hopeful idea died. The truth settled on him like the fall of night: there was nothing he could do. No reason to try. He was too weak.

Li Markuth spread his arms and his wings, and the sky darkened even further, until night fell over Sacred Valley. The whole arena shook as he called on the vital aura of the world, the four White Fox pillars crumbling to rubble. Only Markuth shone in the darkness, his body outlined by white power. “The world is wide outside your narrow Paths,” he said, even as the crowd of Jades prepared their techniques. “Let me guide you.”

The Jade elders of the Wei and Kazan clans walked onstage in a solemn procession, summoning foxfire or Forging bright red blades. They spread out in front of Markuth, some forty or fifty of them, and from their faces Lindon knew they were each prepared to die.

And in that moment, Lindon decided to die with them.

Maybe he
was
too weak, and his death would accomplish nothing. But it was better to bet on the tiny chance that he was wrong than to wait for death without even trying.

When Lindon stood up, Markuth didn't so much as move his eyes. It was as though anyone less than Jade didn't even exist to him. When the first ranks of Wei elders moved toward him with madra readied, the Grand Patriarch condensed wind and shadow around each of his fists.

Lindon crept in front of him, still unnoticed. He didn't even glance down, paying Lindon no more attention than he did the stones beneath his feet. The sky overhead flashed white.

And Lindon, ignored by the Grand Patriarch, landed an Empty Palm on Markuth's core.

It was as though he’d splashed water on a boulder.
 

Even legends never suggested that a Foundation-stage child could harm a Gold. It was like a fly attacking a tiger…no, attacking a mountain. If everyone at the Foundation stage in all of Sacred Valley joined hands and pooled their madra, they couldn’t do so much as ruffle the clothes of the Grand Patriarch of the Li Clan. Lindon should have known better.

He should have remembered his place.

His force vanished uselessly, and Markuth backhanded him in the midsection. Even in the end, he didn’t give Lindon a single glance.

The casual slap of a Gold struck hard enough to knock him backwards off the stage, but somehow it didn’t hurt. He landed in the dirt, but the air had already vanished from his lungs. His mouth flapped open, trying to grab a breath, but it was as though the air had disappeared.

He tried to sit up, but nothing happened. He remained on his back, his head shaking from side to side. Lindon strained his eyes, looking down, to see how bad his injuries were.

I’m still dreaming,
he realized, when he didn’t see his legs. That was the only explanation. He’d been a fool to consider any of it real. Golds didn’t descend from the sky, the Patriarch couldn’t bow, his mother didn’t die for no reason, and his legs were supposed to be at the end of his body.

It was comforting to know that he was dreaming. Soon he would wake up, and then everything would make sense again. In fact, he could feel exhaustion pressing down on him like a blanket. Maybe that was what waking up felt like, in a dream.

His head flopped to the left, and he caught a glimpse of his father and sister. Kneeling, like the rest. Kelsa’s eyes were fixed on his, glistening with tears, her face pale. Why was she so sad? This was just a dream, she shouldn’t worry so much.

Jaran wasn’t looking at him at all, but was fixed on the battle between Markuth and the Jades. He had to admit that hurt, even if it wasn’t real.

He let his eyes slide shut to hide the sight of his kneeling father. When he woke up, everything would be all right again.

That was Lindon’s last thought before he died.

Chapter 11

With the assistance of her Presence, Suriel watched her target location from a thousand kilometers away. The fated arrival point was an empty stretch of forest in the territory of a local clan, one marked by images of a white five-tailed fox. [The Wei clan,] her Presence informed her, spooling out lines of explanatory text in her vision. She willed the explanations away, scanning the area.

There was some sort of festival nearby, where children from various clans engaged in combat games. She watched the matches idly for a while, waiting for the spatial violation destined to occur nearby.

One boy in particular caught her attention—tall, broad-shouldered, with a wooden badge and a rough face. He was the oldest of the group, and he won as easily as someone of his size should defeat younger children. The crowd treated him with disdain, but he seemed to carry himself with pride, as though pushing nine-year-olds out of bounds was an achievement.

She looked a little deeper, examining his soul.

She spotted his flaw immediately. He'd been born with a madra deficiency; that could be corrected, given time, but primitive clans like these often ostracized or marginalized the weak. Only the strong could contribute to the greater good.

She ordered her Presence to pull up the boy’s story, digesting it in an instant. It was as she’d expected. He was born with nothing, less than nothing, and others increased his burden because of it. Yet today, he still fought. She could admire that.

His fate unspooled in front of her, a series of images stringing from one to another. She would have seen clearer images, even branching paths, had she left her eyes functional, but in her current disguised state this was the best she could do.

The boy fights against a relative of his, a young man with long black hair and an iron badge. The boy cheats, releases emerald hornets, ekes out a technical victory.

With a bulky brown pack on his back, he bends his head over a scroll, studying a Path by candlelight in someone else’s home.

The same boy, years later, weeping as he earns his copper badge.

As a man with gray in his hair, he and his wife and their children gather around before a ceremony that sees him promoted to Iron.

He dies in a Dreadgod attack that claims a quarter of the valley, decades hence.

Suriel willed the fate away, wiping aside the pathetic collection of images. These would be his dominant fate, the most likely path for the boy's life, and a thousand little things could change it. But left to his own devices, he would overcome his handicap to live a happy and satisfying life, dying a little early.

That was all.

Her interest waned, shifting as the Presence chirped in her mind. [Spatial violation imminent]. The spot in the empty forest flared red, glowing brighter and brighter.

Suriel launched herself from the ledge on which she'd been standing, shattering the air in an explosion as she moved faster than sound. She was late.

Predicting events based on fate was an art more than a science, and not her specialty. She had chosen to stay a few thousand kilometers away for safety, to avoid undue interference. She'd known it was a risk, but now the event was upon her, and she couldn't arrive in time without tearing the atmosphere apart. She could bend space to transport directly in, but her target might sense the distortion and flee to another world. Even so, she wasn't unduly concerned.