Poetry Chants, Saber Howls – Chapter 2

A Startled Swan Glances Back Beneath the Blade; Meeting Unrecognized, Asking After a Name (Part 2)

The saber’s edge was ice-cold, still resting against Xie Yuanjue’s neck.

Anyone with a shred of self-respect would be loath to answer the other party’s questions so lightly in such a predicament. Xie Yuanjue was the exception: at the question she reported her name without a moment’s thought—and the speed of her answer had nothing whatsoever to do with fear.

            

Quite the opposite. Not a single ripple stirred the surface of her face. No fear, no anger, no worry.

And certainly no smile.

A stillness so complete she scarcely seemed a person of flesh at all.

            

Ling Suihan studied her from every angle and concluded, once again, that she resembled nothing so much as a beauty sculpted from liuli glass¹.

—So it truly was not her. Not only was the name different; the temperament was different beyond all comparison.

“Xie Yuanjue…” Ling Suihan turned the name over, and after a moment she still could not help asking a second question. “I’ve heard there is a healer in the jianghu whose medical art stands peerless under heaven—a bhikkhuni² of the Buddhist order, Dharma name Jiuru, dwelling in Longevity Valley in Hongzhou. You are a physician yourself—have you heard of her?”

            

“The name has passed my ears.” A faint stir moved through Xie Yuanjue’s eyes, yet she shook her head without the least hesitation. “But I have never known her. Why do you ask after her?”

“Didn’t you just say no one in this world can undo this poison?” A trace of veiled disappointment surfaced between Ling Suihan’s brows. Her chest felt tighter by the moment; she drew one long breath before continuing. “They say this Dharma Master Jiuru is the foremost divine physician under heaven. Not even she could manage it?”

“Do not twist my words,” Xie Yuanjue said flatly. “I told you only this: if you do not fear death, you are welcome to try someone else. Hongzhou lies at least half a month’s journey from here. If you are still living by the time you arrive, you may of course go and beg Great Master Jiuru.”

            

In truth, Ling Suihan did not yet believe this poison could claim her life.

But the jianghu did hold many breeds of slow poison, whose ravages deepened with the passage of time until no medicine on earth availed—and she wanted no part of that gamble.

Fortunately, she and Xie Yuanjue bore each other no grudge, and she had never meant to make an enemy of the woman. She turned her head a fraction, and a frost-cold gaze settled on the middle-aged man nearby. “You know him?”

            

“He is my patient.”

“And do you know this patient’s background?”

Xie Yuanjue said nothing more. She watched Ling Suihan’s eyes in silence and waited for her next words.

            

Ling Suihan had been about to explain, then thought better of it—talk proved nothing. Better to simply show her the bounty warrant. But she had only the one hand; to reach for anything else, she would have to let go of the saber.

Even as she hesitated, a black shape burst upward at the corner of her vision, a raptor stooping, and lunged violently at Doctor Yu and the apprentice boy huddled in the corner. The poor souls knew not a whit of martial arts—one of them a child barely past ten—and they could not dodge in time; their three souls³ were frightened clean out of their bodies, and they stood rooted, helpless.

Ling Suihan’s wrist rolled upon the hilt. White light flashed a second time, snow flying through the air, cleaving toward Peng Lie’s right hand.

            

This time Peng Lie was on his guard; he twisted aside at once. But he carried wounds to begin with, and Ling Suihan’s saberwork was supreme beyond argument—with a ringing clang, the stroke failed to sever his right hand and in the same instant sheared through the long saber in his grip.

Peng Lie’s shock deepened. Matters had come to this, he thought—however far he could run, run first and reckon later. His foot had barely taken a step when he stopped moving.

Stopped—because he could not move.

            

Ling Suihan’s eyes found the silver needles standing in the vital points of his chest, then traced the silk threads at their tails back to Xie Yuanjue, and she slid her saber home into its scabbard.

—At this moment, she no longer possessed the ability to lay a blade against Xie Yuanjue’s neck.

She bowed her head, dropped her gaze, and breathed rough breaths she could not govern—yet her spine stayed straight as a drawn sword from first to last.

            

Xie Yuanjue came forward several paces, stood before her, studied her color awhile, then reached out a hand.

Ling Suihan swerved quickly aside. “What are you doing?”

“Do you not wish to be rid of the poison?” Xie Yuanjue said.

            

Young as she was, Ling Suihan had weathered much, and her wariness ran deep. To hand her body over to a stranger’s handling did not sit easily with her, and she hesitated—until she lifted her head and fell, once more, into the still water of Xie Yuanjue’s gaze.

Different as their airs might be, those brows, those eyes…

At the thought of the one in her memory, Ling Suihan’s heart went soft by a degree. At last she was willing to trust; she let Xie Yuanjue reach out once more and first take her pulse.

            

A moment later, puzzlement rose to that face, calm as a level lake.

Ling Suihan’s brow arched. “Don’t tell me the poison is your own—and you’ve forgotten how to undo it?”

Xie Yuanjue seemed on the verge of speech, as though some question begged asking; in the end she asked nothing. Her palm turned, pale fingers flicked, and in the blink of an eye seven silver needles shot like meteors into seven vital points upon Ling Suihan’s body.

            

Only a short while passed before the wrongness inside Ling Suihan faded, strangely, degree by degree. She moved her internal energy in secret—no obstruction anywhere.

Xie Yuanjue drew back her needles, and in the same moment Ling Suihan’s left hand slipped within her robe, drew out a sheet of paper, and held it out.

Unfolded, it bore a portrait and several lines of writing. Only then did Xie Yuanjue learn that her patient answered to the name Peng Lie—a notorious outlaw who killed for plunder and left no evil undone. Not long since, he had broken into the residence of a high official to do violence; the enraged imperial court had posted a bounty warrant for his arrest.

            

As it happened, Ling Suihan had sighted this warrant on her road to Chang’an, and so had taken the matter in hand.

And Peng Lie’s sudden attack just now owed itself to precisely this: he had watched the two women’s talk arrive at the crux, and feared that once Xie Yuanjue learned who he was, she would help him no more. His internal wounds were heavy; he could never overcome that mysterious saber-wielder risen out of nowhere, and even his lightness skill would not carry him far. So his mind spun a few turns, and he resolved to snatch the two commonfolk as hostages while the women stood locked at odds.

Who could have foreseen that this very move would forge the first collaboration between Ling and Xie?

            

Despair closed over him in that moment. He took himself for fish on the chopping block⁴, beyond any hope that someone might save him.

Ling Suihan thought so too.

Since Xie Yuanjue now knew the truth, the misunderstanding between them stood dissolved. “Thank you for holding him for me.” She was even willing to extend the woman a little warmth now, and smiled faintly. “I’ll be taking him off your hands. There’s a woman lying in the next room—wounded by Peng Lie himself, still unconscious, I’d imagine. Treat her, will you?”

            

With that, she made to turn.

“Please wait,” Xie Yuanjue said.

Ling Suihan looked back. “Something more?”

            

“You cannot take him now.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have not yet cured his injury.”

            

At those words, not Ling Suihan alone—even Peng Lie was thunderstruck, unable to believe it. The smile just risen to Ling Suihan’s lips died away. She knitted her brows, looking back and forth between the two of them for a long while. “You mean you intend to keep protecting him?” she said coldly.

“Until his internal injury heals—you could say so.”

“You know what manner of man he is now.”

            

“He came to me seeking treatment, and I agreed to treat him. Whatever other identity he may carry, at this moment he is my patient.”

“Ah, yes—the Benevolent Heart of a Healer, mercy and compassion without end.” Mockery ran through Ling Suihan’s tone, open and undisguised. “Save his life, and he goes off to slaughter more innocents. Well out of your sight, naturally.”

Xie Yuanjue still did not anger. She stayed calm and even, her voice indifferent. “Why must you keep altering my words? I said I would treat his injury. I never said I would save his life.”

            

The meaning beneath was plain: once Peng Lie’s internal injury mended, she would no longer bar the arrest. Ling Suihan understood. She hesitated briefly, reasoning that she and this physician had crossed paths by sheer chance—the woman was no more than a passerby in the course of her life—and she had weightier matters before her; there was no cause for conflict, for entanglement and lost time. So she asked:

“How long until you’ve cured him?”

Xie Yuanjue deliberated. “His other wounds are nothing. But the force of the Nine Curves Palm is no trivial thing—he will need at the least half a day before he is whole again.”

            

“What?!” Peng Lie’s acupoints were sealed, his movements bound, and he had been turning over what to do next when Xie Yuanjue’s words fell on him; he shrieked on the spot. “Y-you’re telling me the palm I took was the Nine Curves Palm?”

It was a famous art of the jianghu. Never having met it before, he had still heard tell of its ferocity: whoever took that strike kept its blade-qi within the body, grinding at the five organs and six bowels, the torment mounting day upon day—and nine days hence, paralysis at the lightest, death at the worst.

No ordinary medicine could cure it. One must seek out a master of profound internal energy, then find some secluded place, and within nine days, morning, noon, and night, spend half a shichen⁵ at a time driving inner force through to clear the meridians.

            

Peng Lie groaned inwardly. Had he known the palm he carried was this killing art, he would never have squandered time coming here for treatment. And yet… his thoughts turned again. Even had he passed this clinic by, he could not soon have found a master willing to spend his own internal energy healing him.

His lot could hardly sink lower as it stood. He might as well try doctoring a dead horse as a live one⁶.

He looked at the young physician, half believing, half doubting. “You can truly cure this wound?”

            

“My name is Xie Yuanjue. Yuan as in karmic affinity; Jue as in enlightenment.” The physician changed the subject without warning.

“Huh?” Peng Lie could make nothing of it.

Xie Yuanjue went on. “If I cure you, remember the name.”

            

Ling Suihan, listening, was as much at sea as Peng Lie. Could it be—knowing full well Peng Lie was no good man—she still meant to treat him because she fancied his martial skill, bestowing favor now to collect repayment later? But Peng Lie had killed those no man should kill; the court’s bounty ran rich; beyond the soldiers, no few roving swordsmen of the jianghu hunted him as well. Barely able now to keep his own skin, what could he ever repay Xie Yuanjue with?

Her gaze gathered upon Xie Yuanjue—only to see the woman turn her head toward the clinic’s master, her tone and manner grown considerably more courteous. “Doctor Yu, it nears midday. I must trouble you once more…”

Doctor Yu started, came back to himself, and hesitated a moment. “R-right, right—I’ll go at once.” And he went out through the door of the room.

            

Xie Yuanjue moved toward the door at the same time.

“Where are you going?” Ling Suihan asked, suspicious.

“Didn’t you just say there was another patient in the next room?”

            

The apprentice boy, still fretting over the wounded stranger, finally found his tongue. “Y-yes… I looked in on that patient just now. She’s badly hurt—if she goes any longer without treatment, I’m afraid she’ll lose her life.”

With seven vital points on his body pinned fast by silver needles, Xie Yuanjue left Peng Lie where he stood, easy in her mind. Following the apprentice’s lead, she came to the side chamber next door—and there upon a couch by the window lay a young maiden, eyes still shut fast. Thankfully, breath still moved in her; her pulse still beat.

Xie Yuanjue took her pulse and studied her wounds with the most meticulous care, while Ling Suihan waited, growing anxious, her patience fraying. “Can she be treated?”

            

“Naturally.” Xie Yuanjue nodded—then named a sum.

Ling Suihan went visibly blank for an instant.

Xie Yuanjue explained: “To seek a physician and pay the consultation fee—this is the way of heaven and earth, no more than right.”

            

For all that, Ling Suihan had seen the arts this woman carried—she was no common physician, and with that proud, chill, remote air besides—so she had truly never expected her to bring up that reeking thing, copper cash, of her own accord.

Payment for treatment was indeed only proper, however, so Ling Suihan said no more. She was just reaching into her travel pouch for the fee when the hand stretched toward her waist stopped dead—she cared nothing for such things outside the body, but to pay, out of her own purse, for the healing of a Dingshan Sect disciple? Not if it were a single copper coin. Not ever.

So instead she untied the purse hanging at Tang Yiluo’s waist—well filled, as it proved, with copper coins and bits of silver—and tossed it, whole, to Xie Yuanjue. “Whatever it comes to, take it yourself.”

            

Xie Yuanjue found this strange. “Isn’t she your friend?”

“Never met her. Picked her up on the road just now.”

Xie Yuanjue was no greedy sort; she took out only the share owed her, then returned the purse to Tang Yiluo. Just then came the sound of footsteps—Doctor Yu arrived at the doorway, a food box in each hand.

            

“Doctor Xie, I’ve bought the meal. All of it still hot.”

Xie Yuanjue gave her thanks; and by the time Doctor Yu had set out the dishes from the boxes upon the table, she was already seated at it.

Ling Suihan stared in frank astonishment. “You’re eating now?”

            

“It is already midday,” Xie Yuanjue said.

It was, after all, the proper hour for the noonday meal.

“But you all just said—she’s badly wounded, and without treatment soon she may die,” Ling Suihan said.

            

“She is not about to die this instant. Be at ease—once I have dined, I will treat her.”

They had known each other no length of time; Ling Suihan had seen her poison arts with her own eyes, but her medicine she could not yet wholly trust. “Wounds and sickness turn on a hair,” she said, steeped in doubt. “If she suddenly worsens and breathes her last, will you still be in time?”

“Then her luck was poor,” Xie Yuanjue said. “The consultation fee, I will refund you.”

            

Those words set the fire alight in Ling Suihan’s chest on the instant.

Ling Suihan had never held any goodwill for disciples of the Dingshan Sect. But she kept her debts and grudges in clean order: before sinking into unconsciousness, Tang Yiluo had told her where Peng Lie had gone, and that had laid a debt of feeling upon her—which sat exceedingly ill with her. Bringing Tang Yiluo to this clinic repaid that debt; as for whether the clinic’s physicians could save Tang Yiluo’s life, she did not care one copper’s worth.

It was Xie Yuanjue’s attitude alone that she could not stomach.

            

“A moment ago I took you for a true Benevolent Heart of a Healer—merely rigid, merely pedantic, in the practice of it. I never knew your benevolence was reserved for wicked men alone.”

The voice was as keen as her saber.

Doctor Yu feared their barbed words would sour into another fight and drag him down with them, and had half a mind to offer to eat later and tend the wounded girl first; but one glance at the young maiden—wound upon wound laid open on her body, and the old rule that men and women must not touch⁷—and he faltered, and in the end said nothing at all.

            

Xie Yuanjue, wholly indifferent, drew a small celadon vial from her robe with unhurried grace, tipped one snow-white pill into the cup of her palm, carried it to her lips, and swallowed. A while passed before she spoke at last, her tone mild and level: “The physician, too, is one of the Thirty-Six Professions—little different from any other trade, no more than a livelihood one eats by on the strength of one’s skill. Why must the world forever lay its hopes upon healers, and demand of them a benevolent heart?”

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