Legend of The Young Master

Chapter 207: Traitor

The Pavilion Mistress felt the spells Luding cast. She had lain down to rest, but it was happening sooner than she expected. She sat up, her mind reaching for the threads of power that bound her to her fortress and pavilion. She felt him in the darkness out there, planning the ruin of her home, and she narrowed her eyes, reaching down the link they would always share.

"Traitor!" she said, flinging the word with a woman's contempt.

"Xueyan!" he cried into the Aether.

She hurled her defiance at him and felt her venom strike home. In the moment of his startlement, she read his consciousness and saw that he had a trap prepared—that she had a traitor in her midst, as she had long suspected.

Then she was running, her bare feet slapping the stone floor, her unbound hair trailing behind her like the tail of a comet, running for the courtyard. She felt him respond and had her defenses up. She felt his come up—slowly, but when raised, as strong as a wall of iron. She couldn't even sense him through them, merely that he must be behind that veil. She prayed as she ran—prayed for his ruin.

The young master was standing by his beast horse in the courtyard, with twenty warriors behind him.

"You cannot go out there!" she screamed. "He is waiting for you! It is a trap!"

The young master gave her an odd smile and waved to Jia, who had his mask. "He's coming already, is he?" he said to her. He turned to his warriors. "Mount!" he shouted.

She grabbed his reins, and his great war horse—The horse quick as lightning—bit at her hand. Only her instant reaction saved her. Wuyi slapped his hand at Haruki's neck, and the war horse took one step and tossed his head as if to say, "Could have, if I really wanted."

"He is coming now—"

His attendant placed his headpiece on his head and pulled the silk veil down over his qi armor. Wuyi flexed his shoulders and arms—left, right. All through the courtyard, attendants held up armguards, slid them onto their masters' hands, and then warriors reached for the great spears, as tall as small trees and as thick, tipped with long heads of steel.

His face hidden under the mask, he was smiling. "Yes," Wuyi said. "I feel him. Through your consciousness." He laughed. "What did you do?"

"I told him what I think of him," she said. "A woman scorned—for power?" She threw back her head and laughed. It sounded mad.

"I imagine," Wuyi said, even as Jia moved the headpiece back and forth, seating it securely on his brow, "that must have been a shrewd blow."

She shook her head. "His pride will shed it soon enough. But I saw into him. He has a traitor in the fortress."

"I know," said Wuyi. "I told you," he gave a nasty smile, "and that traitor has been giving our foe a somewhat incorrect version of events for some time now. It is now or never. He can lay all the traps he likes."

Sometimes, it all comes down to speed and audacity. He is cautious. He is sure."

Wuyi seemed to glow with the power he'd prepared. "He wants this fight," Wuyi said. "So do I. One of us is wrong. We can only try our best, so guard yourself, my lady."

The main gate slid open.

"Follow me!" ordered Wuyi.

She stood out of the way and watched him ride out. The hooves rattled with finality, and the warriors began to move. Warriors reached out to her. Xueqin Yang accepted her blessing, and she reached up to pray for Xuanli Ye, who accepted her blessings with a salute. Lianzhi Zhu bowed to her from the saddle and swept by.

Wuyi paused in the gateway. Above Pavilion mistress, on the balcony of the healing hall, he saw Liwei. She saw him nod at her, and she bowed her head.

Haruki reared a little, plunged through the gate, and he was gone.

The Pavilion Mistress turned to Wanxie, who was standing by her. "Everyone is to go to the basements and lie down," she said. "Everyone!"

She ran into the courtyard, shouting orders. The alarm bell was ringing, and the archers were pouring out of their barracks to their battle positions. All of them were in armor. They knew the score.

The Pavilion Mistress stopped in the courtyard and looked around once. The last doors were slamming closed. She nodded in satisfaction, wished she had time to hunt for Monk Zen, and ran for the temple.

✶ ✶ ✶

Monk Zen saw the Pavilion Mistress talk to her boy—his revulsion showed raw on his face. They were all creatures of Evil—the Pavilion Mistress, the warriors, the pavilion members. He was surrounded by evils. It was like hell. His master had told him.

He was done with inaction. He had the power to destroy them. He had all the tools a normal man had to use against evil. He knew he would not survive it, but all his life, he had endured pain and mistreatment for what he knew was right. His only regret was that he could not act directly against that young man. That man was like Evil incarnate.

Monk Zen went into the temple, where a dozen members were already gathered—not real members, he knew it now, but a coven of evil members. All gathered to sing their damnable mockery of praise to righteousness.

He made himself smile at Yueli. She was too busy to pay him any heed. Just for a moment, he considered striking with his knife—right here. Taking Yueli and a dozen of these evil witches—

He hid his eyes lest they read his mind and slipped past them to the altar. He reached behind it, seized the long staff of heavy wood, and his hand unerringly found the one arrow he needed.

Black as her heart.

It was a most remarkable arrow. Behind the head and the first three fingers of the shaft, all white bone, the rest of the arrow was of cursed Bane.

✶ ✶ ✶

In a plan dependent on preparation, planning, and skill mastery, it was ironic that the first part required twenty brave men and one middle-aged woman to risk their lives to sweep the road clean. And he didn't even know if they'd succeeded. But Luding couldn't possibly expect him to come on horseback through the Lower Town.

In fact, Wuyi had seen to it that Luding would expect him on the covered footpath instead.

Out in the darkness, where the Lower Town had been, a line of lights sprang up. It was a small skill—hardly a ripple on a sea full of heavy waves. But when the blue lights sprang up, Wuyi gave Haruki a tap on head. They marked a sure way through the rubble of the Lower Town.

He found that the darkness heartened him. He wouldn't fail because of a detail. Now, it was a fight. He grinned inside the mask and reached into the chamber and touched the statue of shadows. He did not have time for formalities. The Qi from the statue of shadows flew into his eyes.

Back in reality, his sense of the night altered. The outline of the trap in night was clear now, and he smiled like a wolf when the prey begins to tire. Luding had sent creatures into the ditch beyond the remnants of the Lower Town wall—the ditch his own men had dug to communicate with the Bridge Castle. It was now full of swampling, which suited him just fine.

Off to the south, at the entry to the defended path which the archers had taken and retaken every day of the siege, waited a company of Yingmo. At least forty of them, enough to exterminate his group of warriors. He grinned. "I didn't go that way," he thought smugly. The creatures of the Wild were not as clever as men at hiding themselves.

It occurred to him as he cantered down the steep road that they didn't think of hiding. To them, it was their natural element. Or something.

And out on the plain, moving steadily forward towards the town, was Luding. The great figure towered over his allies. Even at this distance, he stood head and shoulders above the Dusha who surrounded him, at least twenty feet tall with a bony body. He towered, but he was not particularly fearsome from five hundred paces.

He was a beacon in darksight, though, and his power wound away in a hundred threads—to the skies, to the creatures around him, to the woods behind him—

Two dozen Dusha guarded the spectral figure, reflecting his power. Even as Wuyi watched the specter, he raised his staff.

Luding raised his staff. He could see the dark sun. For a moment, he was tempted to lay his great working on this mysterious, twisted creature, but a plan is, after all, a plan. He reached into the slug on his left shoulder, and gray fire washed up his right arm, pulsed once on his staff—and it was like joy; like the ultimate release of love.

The light was like that of the deep woods on a perfect suffering day. It was not a pinpoint, a line, a bolt, a ball. It was everywhere.