Chapter 23 #4
“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?”