Poetry Chants, Saber Howls – Chapter 14
by Little PandaA Distant Guest Arrives in the Deep Night Valley; Who Can Fathom the Life and Death of a Mayfly (Part 3)
She couldn’t have said exactly where things had gone wrong, but Shan Lan’s instincts warned her danger was closing in, and there was no time left to puzzle through the array around them. She seized Xie Miao’s hand and pressed forward — wherever the path led didn’t matter; even getting lost was fine. They only needed somewhere to hide for the night. Come morning, Dharma Master Jiuru would find Xie Miao gone, and would come looking for her.
But Xie Miao’s illness had long since broken out; she had been forcing down the discomfort every step of the way, and now she truly had no strength left to run. Barely two steps along, dragged by the hand, and her breathing grew ragged and heavy.
Shan Lan had to stop. She was just bending to take the girl on her back when the wind rose in a sudden roar, cold air skirling past, and a swath of purple cloud came flying out of the night sky, skimmed over Shan Lan’s head in a heartbeat — and the next instant a figure barred the way before her. In that same breath Shan Lan’s sword left its sheath in one reversed draw, its light white-bright as frost, leveled straight at Qin Jiao.
“Fine swordsmanship!” Qin Jiao knew the woman’s swordwork outclassed her own, yet she showed not a flicker of fear. On the contrary, she advanced two paces, walked right up beside the blade, and flicked the sword’s spine with a finger — a ringing clang — then laughed. “A pity. However exquisite the Dingshan Sect’s swordplay, can you still perform it on internal energy now?”
“And when, exactly, was I poisoned this time?” Of everything, this was what Shan Lan genuinely wished to know, so she asked it before all else.
Whether it was because her internal injuries had healed, or for some other reason entirely, Qin Jiao happened to be in rare good humor, and was pleased to oblige. “The moment you swallowed that antidote.”
“So the antidote was false?”
“No. It was a true antidote — and a true poison.” Qin Jiao smiled. “It genuinely undid the first toxin in you. Only, at the same moment, a second poison entered your body as well — one that needed half a shichen, a full hour, before it stirred.”
“No wonder the heroes of the jianghu all call you the World’s Foremost Poison Master. The name is no empty thing.” Shan Lan’s expression stayed cold; her sword remained unbent in her grip. “But this second poison of yours seems weaker than the first. If I stake everything on one throw, who’s to say my internal energy won’t still answer?”
“Leave your internal arts alone, rest two days, and you’ll recover on your own — no antidote required. But force your internal energy, and the toxin spreads on the instant. No one alive will save you then.”
“You want me a lamb for your slaughter.”
“Don’t you turn this around on me. You’re the one who hounded me down this whole road — you who insisted on putting me in the ground. I only struck back because I must. And for all that, I can’t say I truly hate you even now. Keep out of my affairs from here on, and why would I need your life at all? So — live or die, Daoist1 Shan Lan. The choosing is yours.”
As the old saying goes, “when you root out evil, see it rooted out utterly2.” Qin Jiao’s crimes were many and her sins ran deep; on any other night, Shan Lan would gladly have traded her own life to cut that scourge out of the world for all who live under heaven. But here and now there was a child to weigh — an innocent swept up between the two of them — and so she hesitated, turning over what Qin Jiao had meant by “keep out of my affairs.”
If all Qin Jiao wanted was for both sides to stand down — one stroke of the brush wiping tonight’s whole account clean — Shan Lan could well agree to that. Ridding the world of a scourge had never been hers alone to accomplish: let her spare this woman today, and with so many martial brothers and sisters of her sect behind her, someone someday would not. She was on the very point of nodding yes when Qin Jiao suddenly turned her head and fixed her gaze on Xie Miao:
“What do you think of my art of poison?”
Xie Miao hadn’t expected to be spoken to. She blinked, looked at Shan Lan, then at Qin Jiao, and told the truth: “It’s very good.”
Qin Jiao laughed. “Then would you like to be my apprentice?”
“Huh?” Her chest still throbbed and her head swam faintly, and she half suspected her sickness had simply grown too fierce — that she’d misheard.
Qin Jiao pressed on. “In the art of poison or the art of medicine, I yield to no one — not even Jiuru. Take me as your master, and I’ll teach you everything I carry. How does that sound?”
The longer Xie Miao listened, the more dazed she grew. Little by little, the grave and deliberate weight of Qin Jiao’s tone got through to her — this was no joke; the woman truly, seriously meant it — and she shook her head at once. “No! You’re a great wicked person, and I won’t learn your arts of hurting people from you!”
“Who told you poison can only ever hurt? It’s no different from the sword, the saber, the fist, and the foot. Carried to the utmost, you may do with it exactly as you please — go where you will, answer to no one, and roam the jianghu at will.”
“But you really do use it for wicked things! Even if I wanted to learn it, I still wouldn’t learn it from you.”
“So you mean to keep following Jiuru? You think she’s better than I am?”
“Of course she’s better than you!” It flew out of Xie Miao without a thought. True, she didn’t much care for Dharma Master Jiuru’s over-stern temper — but every careful, gentle particular of the treatments these past weeks she kept engraved on her heart, and she could feel that beneath that aloof, cold brilliance, the peerless physician’s heart was in truth a very good one.
At that, the smile on Qin Jiao’s face finally closed. It sank away slowly, her voice cooling by degrees. “You’re wrong. She can’t protect you. She may even be the death of you.”
Hearing that word — death — so suddenly, Xie Miao’s eyes flickered. She bowed her head, lashes low, right hand clamped tight over her heart. “I was the one who insisted on running out tonight. How is that her fault… In any case…” Her voice snapped abruptly higher. “I will absolutely never be your apprentice!”
“That’s not yours to refuse!”
The last word fell, and Qin Jiao wasted no more of them. A light tap of her toes, her figure a wild goose on the wind — one flicker, and she was gliding at Xie Miao’s side, hand already reaching for the girl’s arm, when a stern cold gleam stabbed at her. That sword came in like a drifting white cloud, exquisite past all fault, and Qin Jiao could only twist in midair to slip past it. She settled standing on a branch, gazing down from her height at Shan Lan, who trembled through her whole frame:
“I warned you just now — no more meddling. When the poison takes hold, do you imagine you’ll survive it by luck a second time?”
Only now did Shan Lan understand what “meddling” had meant. Her brow knotted tight, doubts filling her chest. In the jianghu there had been precedent enough — unorthodox masters of Qin Jiao’s lawless, unbridled stamp spotting some household’s gifted child and simply snatching the child off as a disciple. But until tonight, Xie Miao had shown not the smallest spark of gift for medicine, poison, or their principles. What, in this child, had Qin Jiao seen — that she must suddenly, at any cost, take her as her own?
Whether or not some scheme hid inside Qin Jiao’s decision, a good child with a chivalrous heart like Xie Miao’s born nature was no kin to a fiend who lived by wickedness. She could never allow the child to be led off by Qin Jiao and swallowed by that crooked path.
Shan Lan decided in a heartbeat. Let her insides scald and grind as they would — her hand stayed fast on the hilt, and she gave a cold little laugh. “Before the poison strikes, there’s still time to kill you. Go—” The second half was plainly for Xie Miao. “Don’t stand there being my burden. Once I’ve killed her, come find me!”
With a nature as kind as Xie Miao’s, no plain plea to flee alone and save herself would ever have moved her — so Shan Lan had thought quickly and, sure enough, words in reverse sent the girl turning to run. But Xie Miao had been quick-witted from the cradle, no dullard at all. A few panicked steps, a mere moment, and it felt wrong — and behind her the ring of steel on steel had already risen. She looked back without meaning to. Snow-white swordlight wove and flashed around a figure like a drifting blue cloud; the blade stood a hair’s breadth from Qin Jiao’s brow — then, of a sudden, it stopped. A soft wet burst — and scarlet blood sprayed from Shan Lan’s mouth!
“No!” Xie Miao cried out, horror-struck. The surge in her chest drove the pain ten times over, and she could hold herself up no longer — she crumpled to the ground. She had known Shan Lan for less than a single shichen, not two hours, yet deep inside she had already made of her a dear new friend. To see that friend hanging at the edge of life — how could her heart not lurch? Her throat flooded sweet, and a mouthful of blood rose in her, too. “I’ll do it! I’ll be your apprentice — just don’t touch her again!”
At those words, Qin Jiao had in fact been rather pleased. She turned to look — and saw the blood at the corner of Xie Miao’s lips. Her face drained, blank with shock.
The antidote she’d given this child had been beyond the least fault. So how…
Her joy vanished on the spot. Face grave, brow furrowed, she started forward — was nearly at Xie Miao’s side. Shan Lan lay on the ground without a thread of strength, utterly unable to stop her. And in that instant the night sky flickered with pinpoints of white light, as though a myriad meteors had come raining down, closing over Qin Jiao from head to foot.
Before so deadly an attack, she raised no counter at all. She simply stopped where she stood, vermilion lips parting:
“Eldest Martial Sister. It’s been a long time. Is this how you welcome me?”
The countless silver needles whisked away in the space of a blink. In the eastern woods a cluster of red light kindled; a moment later a Buddhist nun in a haiqing robe3, lantern raised in her right hand, came walking slowly out of the trees. The moonlight lay cool as water. Xie Miao lifted her head with effort, and by that light made out the nun’s face — strikingly lovely, brows and eyes laced with frost, her bearing too austere to transgress.
“M-Master Jiuru…”
What had Qin Jiao just called Dharma Master Jiuru? Xie Miao’s eyes went wide, astonishment tangling with doubt. She tried to think out what joined the two of them, and her head only ached the more for it — the world went black, and she sank into unconsciousness.
“Second Martial Sister…?” Jiuru took in the wreckage of the clearing, and doubt rose in her as well. “A long parting — and the gift you’ve brought me is certainly… original.”
“Don’t think too much of it. I brought you no gift. That one is Shan Lan, a Daoist of the Dingshan Sect, who simply had to meddle — avenging some perfect stranger — and so chased me here—”
She hadn’t finished before Jiuru had already caught the crux of her words.
“You’ve killed again?”
“Those I kill are those who deserve killing.”
Jiuru was silent a while. Presently she went to Xie Miao’s side, crouched, and felt for the girl’s pulse, her brow knotting deeper still. “This is not what our Junior Martial Sister would have wanted of you…”
“Enough!” Qin Jiao cut off the unfinished words at once, displeasure naked on her face. “She’s dead. What do you know of how she thought? I ask you — is this little girl your disciple?”
Jiuru, so rarely given to sighs, let out a long one. “No.”
Qin Jiao smiled. “No? Better still, then. My congratulations, Eldest Martial Sister — you’ll soon have a martial niece.”
That only deepened Jiuru’s astonishment. She turned it over a good long while before she was certain she hadn’t mistaken the meaning, and her baffled gaze went to the woman across from her. “You mean to take this child as your disciple. That is why you poisoned her… Do you mean to take a dead girl for a disciple?”
“That poison was no lethal venom. And besides — I cured her of it long since.”
“No lethal venom — for anyone else.” Jiuru’s voice lowered. “But for her… Second Martial Sister, before you poisoned her, did you never once take her pulse?”
Back then, Qin Jiao’s grave wounds had not yet closed; even lifting a hand had been an ordeal. Where would she have found spare strength for a pulse? Now, at Jiuru’s words, a vague dread surfaced in her heart. She strode over swiftly, set three fingers — index, middle, ring — upon Xie Miao’s wrist, and in an instant her countenance altered utterly.
“She…”
“She was born with grave illness; her allotted span is less than half an ordinary life.” Even as she spoke, Jiuru had the silver needles out, sinking them into Xie Miao’s acupoints. “As things now stand… this may be the fate that was written for her…”
Footnotes
- 道长 | Daozhang | Literally 'elder of the Way' — a respectful address for Daoist practitioners that jianghu custom extends to monastically styled martial artists of either gender.
- 除恶务尽 | Chu'e Wu Jin | Literally 'exterminating evil, be exhaustive' — a maxim descending from the Book of Documents' charge to cut off evil at its root; the classic warrant for giving villains no quarter.
- 海青 | Haiqing | Loose, wide-sleeved dark robe worn by Chinese Buddhist monastics and devout laity; the standard temple vestment, whose sweeping sleeves are said to recall a seabird's wings in flight.
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