“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?”
“We remember voices,” Feylen said slowly. His voice was scratchy from months without use; it sounded like a steel blade dragged against the ancient stone of the mountain. He cocked his head at an unnatural angle, as if trying to tip maggots out of his ear. “We remember fire. And we remember you, Trengsin. We remember your hand across our mouth and your other hand at our throat.”
The way Feylen spoke made Rin clench the hilt of her sword with fear. He didn’t speak like a man who had fought by Altan’s side.
He referred to himself as we.
Altan seemed to have realized this, too. “Do you remember who you are?”
Feylen frowned at this as if he had forgotten. He pondered a long time before he rasped out, “We are a spirit of the wind. We may take the body of a dragon or the body of a man. We rule the skies of this world. We carry the four winds in a bag and we fly as our whims take us.”
“You’re Feylen of the Cike. You serve the Empress, and you served under Tyr’s command. I need your help,” Altan said. “I need you to fight for me again.”
“To . . . fight?”
“There’s a war,” Altan said, “and we need the power of the gods.”
“The power of the gods,” Feylen drawled slowly. Then he laughed.
It wasn’t a human laugh. It was a high-pitched echo that sounded off the mountain walls like the shrieking of bats.
“We fought for you the first time,” he said. “We fought for the Empire. For your thrice-damned Empress. What did that get us? A slap on the back, and a trip to this mountain.”
“You did try to send the Night Castle tumbling down a cliff,” Altan pointed out.
“We were confused. We didn’t know where we were.” Feylen sounded rueful. “But no one helped us . . . no one calmed us. No, instead you helped put us in here. When Tyr subdued us, you held the rope. You dragged us here like cattle. And he stood there and watched the stone close across our face.”
“That wasn’t my decision,” Altan said. “Tyr thought—”
“Tyr got scared. The man asked for our power, and backed off when it became too much.”