Shadows of Moth (12 page)

Breathe.
Move.

He ground his teeth, struggling
not to pass out. Clutching his sword in one hand, he crawled off the
road and into the rye field. The golden stalks rose tall around him,
swaying in the wind. The smell was intoxicating. The soft brown soil
crumbled under him; several ants walked across it, holding seeds. The
sky was blue and a cool breeze rustled.

It's
beautiful,
Torin thought, eyes dampening.
It's
so beautiful.
He had forgotten the scent, the freshness, the beauty of the world
outside the cart.

"Damn your hide to the
Abyss!"

The voice shouted beside him.
The stalks swayed. A boot slammed down near Torin and blood sprayed.
With a thump, a corpse thudded down, cracking stalks. The head hit
the ground beside Torin, staring at him with lifeless eyes. The man
wore a black and gold cloak—a man of Arden. When Torin glanced
upward, he saw a Magerian soldier tug his blade free. The man did not
see him; he cursed and stepped away, already attacking another
Ardishman.

Torin kept crawling.

Boots stomped around him, blood
sprayed, and more bodies fell, but none of the living saw him. Torin
kept moving. A horse galloped by, its hooves missing him by inches. A
fallen helmet crashed down before him, and Torin placed it over his
own head.

Soon Gehena’s shriek tore
across the field. "The traitor has escaped. Find him!"

Sword clutched in his hand,
Torin kept crawling forward. The rye kept him hidden, but the field
wouldn't shield him for long; the stalks creaked and bent as he
moved. Boots thumped before him and a man leaned down. A cruel face
leered.

"I foun—" the man
began

Torin swung his sword, slamming
the blade into the man's face. The Magerian crashed down with a
shower of blood. Torin cursed, rose to a crouch, and ran while bent
over. Another Magerian raced toward him. Torin swung his sword again,
cut the man's hand, then slammed his blade into his neck.

"Find the traitor and drag
him back to me!" The shout rose behind Torin, a typhoon. "Slay
the scu—"

"For Arden!" rose a
high voice—a familiar voice. "Slay the enemy!"

Hooves thundered by. Boots
raced. The banner of Arden—a black raven upon a golden
field—streamed above. And there Torin saw him, clad in armor, his
cloak billowing in the wind.

"Cam," Torin
whispered. He rose to his feet. "Cam!"

The king rode upon a white
courser, a lance in his hand. His armor was dented and bloody, and a
bandage covered his arm. Around him, his fellow riders looked
scarcely better—their armor was cracked, their weapons were chipped,
and their flesh bore both old and fresh wounds. Yet still the
Ardishmen charged toward the Magerian convoy. Magic blasted forward.
Smoky tendrils tore off a horse's legs, and the beast tumbled,
spilling its rider. Swordsmen charged.

"Torin!" Cam shouted,
then turned back toward the battle. His lance drove into a mage,
piercing the robed man's chest. Swords, magic, lances, and arrows
crashed all around in a storm.

Torin snarled and ran toward the
fight. He was wounded, maybe dying. He was thin, feverish, famished,
but still he ran. He would not cower as others fought. He would—

He swayed. The world spun. The
ground seemed to shake.

Red eyes turned toward him, all
consuming. Lord Gehena saw him, and the creature's malice drove into
his heart.

Arrows slammed into the demon.

More Ardish forces swarmed
across the field, several hundred strong. Torin could barely stand
upright, but he forced himself to run with them. He swung his sword
and slew another man. The Magerians fell, one by one, their blood
splattering the field. Hooves trampled over mages, and spears drove
into soldiers' chests.

Torin leaped over bodies and
finally stood before Lord Gehena.

The giant towered above him;
Torin's head did not even reach the creature's shoulders. A chill
emanated from the mage's black robes, but his stare burned like fire.
Arrows and lances pierced the dark mage, and black blood dripped from
him. His blades swung.

Torin parried and thrust.

His sword drove through the
black robes and into flesh.

With battle cries and bright
steel, fellow Ardishmen thrust spears and swords, piercing the demon
lord.

Even as blades cut into him,
Gehena stared at Torin. Those red eyes narrowed with malicious
mockery. A deep, unearthly voice spoke in Torin's mind, echoing
within his skull, scuttling inside him like snakes.

We
will meet again, Torin. And you will meet your daughter. Madori will
be mine, and you will watch me break her.

Torin screamed and swung his
sword.

The blade cut through empty
cloth.

The black robes fell onto the
road, no flesh within him. The iron helmet clattered down, empty and
colder than winter's heart. Ardish soldiers cursed, kicked at the
robes, and stabbed them. Some men laughed and chanted for victory,
but Torin knew the dark mage would return.

He
trembled.
He
knew Madori's name.

"Torin! By Idar, you look
horrible." Cam raced toward him, grabbed Torin's arm, then
looked over his shoulder. "Cade! Lale! Fetch a healer!"

Torin could no longer stay
standing. He fell into his friend's arms, and he was only vaguely
aware of Cam placing him on the road, holding a wineskin over his
lips, and shouting for the healer to hurry. All colors blended
together, then went dark.

 
 
CHAPTER NINE:
YIN SHI

Madori spoke in a slow, strained
voice. "Give me. Back. My sword."

The Desolation stretched around
her. Pillars of stone tilted like the ribs of giants, a hundred feet
tall. Boulders like the stone blades of giants rose from the earth.
Cracks stretched across craters, full of tar, and the fossilized
skulls of ancient reptiles gaped upon cliffs, embedded into the
stone. The stars shone above but the moon was gone. Madori had been
here almost a moon's cycle now, and still the old master withheld her
blade.

That old master now stood before
her, calm, his arms crossed and his hands tucked neatly into his
sleeves. His long white mustache and beard fluttered in the wind.

"First you must learn how
to breathe," he said. "Then I will return your sword to
you."

Madori's rage exploded out of
her. "I've been breathing for a moon now! Stars damn it, I've
been breathing all my life. If I didn't know how to breathe, I'd be
dead. I—"

"If you knew how to breathe
properly, you would do so now instead of shouting," he replied
calmly. "You are learning the breathing of Yin Shi, an ancient
wisdom, not those snorts and huffs you call breathing. Now—again
like we practiced."

Madori growled. It was
intolerable! Only a turn after arriving here, the old man had
snatched her blade away and hidden it somewhere in the Desolation.
She had searched every cave and cranny but hadn't found it.

Huffing, she turned toward her
gray nightwolf. She patted the beast's thick fur; she had cut off the
charred bits and it was growing back nicely. "Come on, Grayhem,
sniff. Use your nose and find the sword."

Grayhem only sniffed her
fingers. She had given him that name a few turns ago, combining his
color and the name of the statue inside The Shadowed Firkin tavern
back home—Hem, the hero baker of the war. However, it didn't seem
the nightwolf even understood the concept of names. He began to sniff
at her pockets, seeking mushrooms.

"Go on. Grayhem! Sniff for
the sword."

The towering canine, large as a
horse, only snorted and slumped down.

Lan Tao stroked the animal and
stared at Madori. "It is time, my student. Your Yin Shi
lessons."

She gripped her head and shouted
at the sky. "I came here to learn how to fight! You promised to
teach me swordplay. How can I learn fighting without a sword?"

"That is the only way to
learn," Lan Tao replied. "I've been teaching you swordplay
from the moment you entered this place. With every breath, you learn
to swing the blade. Now sit down. And we will breathe."

Grumbling, she sat down, crossed
her legs, and closed her eyes. She heard pebbles creak as Lan Tao sat
down before her.

"A deep breath," he
said, voice calm. "In . . . slowly . . ."

She dutifully inhaled, letting
the air fill her from the bottom of her lungs to the top.

"Good," he said.
"Focus your awareness on the air in your lungs. Let it flow to
your feet. Let it fill your fingers, your head, all your body. And .
. . exhale."

She exhaled slowly, trying to
focus all her awareness on the air leaving her lungs. Yet her mind
kept racing. She thought back to Teel University and how the Elorians
had died on the road. She thought of Jitomi, who had traveled alone
into Ilar, and she wondered if he was safe. She thought of her
father, who had gone missing in the battle,

and of Tam and Neekeya who were
seeking aid in Daenor, and—

The air whistled and pain
slapped against her arm. She opened her eyes to see Lan Tao holding
his katana; he had slammed the flat side against her, as he had so
many times.

"Ow!" She glared and
rubbed the red mark.

"You
are not focusing. I can practically hear your thoughts. Your mind is
a storm, but the Yin Shi mind must be a clear pond. Now—try again.
Every time a thought comes into your mind, let it go. Let it be as a
cloud in the sky, floating away. Let it be as a ripple on a pond. As
every thought enters, gaze upon it curiously, like gazing at a
passing light . . . then let it leave you. Keep returning your
awareness to nothing but the air, nothing but the breath entering and
leaving your body. No thinking. No remembering. Simply
being
."

"Can't I even think of
swordplay?" she asked.

He raised his katana again. "You
will do as you're told. Now again—we breathe."

She muttered but she closed her
eyes. She breathed again. A slow breath in, letting it fill her
slowly, letting the air flow to every part of her: her toes, her
legs, her torso, her head, her fingertips. She held the breath, and
at once those damn fears returned to her, anxiousness for her
friends, for her family, for Serin's armies mustering. She had to
stop them! She had to learn to fight. She—

Let
your thoughts be a cloud. Watch them float away.

She tugged her awareness back
toward her breath, exhaling slowly. She let those thoughts flow away
with the air.

"Good . . ." said
Master Lan Tao. "Very good. The Yin Shi mind lets all thoughts
ripple away. The Yin Shi mind is a clear, still pond. And breathe in
. . ."

She breathed in again, held the
air, released it slowly.

"Remember, child, the mind
of a Yin Shi warrior is pure, focused only on existing. Never on the
past. Never on the future. Only in the present. Only on what you are
feeling right now, where you stand or sit, where you breathe, where
you exist." He inhaled deeply. "Feel the air. Feel the wind
around you, the starlight above, the cold stone beneath you. Only
sensing. Never thinking."

She
kept breathing slowly, trying to do as he taught, to only
be
.
She pretended that she were some mollusk in a shell, clinging to
stone, unable to think, to remember, to plan, only to exist in the
present moment. Yet her thoughts kept rising. Every breath or two,
the damn fears returned to her. She saw the dead. She saw the enemy
soldiers. She—

She breathed.

Let
the thoughts flow away.

She breathed in. She breathed
out. Only being. Never thinking. Never remembering. Slowly, breath by
breath, her mind cleared.

They sat like that for hours
most turns, simply breathing, never thinking.

His voice flowed across the
night. "Become like a stone, like a river, like a beam of light,
part of the world, always in the present, always here."

When
finally their session was done, he allowed her to eat. They sat
together, three souls—Madori, Master Lan Tao, and Grayhem—gathered
around a fire. They ate from an iron pot, a simple meal of stewed
mushrooms and wild
shahani
—furry
black animals who lived in the burrows of the Desolation, the size of
Timandra's hares. After so long in silence, Madori kept speaking
between mouthfuls.

"When will I get to swing
my sword? When will I learn how to parry and thrust?" She gulped
down a piece of the fatty meat. "Will you teach me how to pierce
armor?" She bit into a greasy mushroom. "I want to learn
how to fire arrows too, so I can fight from the walls of Salai
Castle. Do you know how to fire arrows, Master Lan Tao?"

He simply stared over his bowl,
smiling thinly. "You are learning all these things already."

She
licked the bottom of her bowl. "Nonsense." She snorted. "I
only learned boring breathing so far. I want to learn how to
fight
,
Master." She jumped to her feet and snarled across the campfire
at him. She swung an imaginary sword. "To slice! To cut! To kill
my enemies! To—"

He vaulted over the flames so
quickly she barely saw him move. His palm connected with her cheek
with a flare of white light. The pain blinded her.

"Why did you not see this
blow?" he said. He slapped her again, harder this time. "Why
don't you defend yourself?"

She gasped, the pain blazing.
She gulped and raised her arms defensively, then felt pain on her
ankle—his foot slamming into her leg. She fell.

He loomed above her, his face no
longer calm but a cold, hard mask. The firelight painted him red, and
he no longer seemed an old man but a demon. His sheathed sword
flashed, and the scabbard hit her shoulder.

"Go on, fight! You wanted
to learn violence?" He snorted. "You wanted to learn to
defeat an enemy? I am your enemy! Defend yourself. Defeat me!"