"The third trial was restraint, after Osh, the beast master. Five courses of a banquet were brought out to the Century Blade, now starving and weak from exhaustion. They laid each one in front of him and for a full day bid him not feast. But once more they had underestimated the Century Blade, for in the mountains of Osaara, the Rock Biters had taught him to sustain himself on his chi and go weeks without food.
"The fourth trial was sharing, after Ryoko, the one that is all. For before they would teach the Century Blade their ways, they needed to know of his own, to be sure he could be trusted. And for this the Century Blade was happy, for he had already taught so many the ways of his arts. At the Library of All Things, he had learned that knowledge helps to better all of man, and there are few things that should not be shared. He taught the people of Unyun his second greatest technique, the Shimmering Sword."
Cho smiled as she dug into the dirt. "The Whispering Blade."
"What?" Ein stared at her across the dying fire and she shook her head at him.
"What was the final trial?"
"After the fourth trial they took the Century Blade into Unyun and there he was treated to a glorious feast and a warm bed as soft as the clouds. The next day they began his training, teaching him the arts that had been passed down generation upon generation, never leaving the tree tops. For five months he learned their greatest secrets, both in their techniques, and in their way of life. He learned to live amongst the trees, to hunt amongst the trees, and to love amongst the trees. And when he had learned all he could from the people of Unyun, they set him his final trial.
"Up amidst the tallest trees in the world, the people of Unyun were beset by monsters from the stars, a punishment for reaching too high. None could say what the creatures looked like, nor how they should be killed, but it was tradition that the masters of Unyun go out onto the forest canopy alone to hunt and slay one of the beasts. A trial in the name of Sen, the shield."
Ein fell silent then, and Cho looked up from the deepening grave to see him frowning at the dying flames of the fire. "What's the matter?"
"That's how the story ended in my book. There was nothing about how he completed the fifth trial."
"Maybe one day I'll tell you the end to the story. I got it right from the horse's mouth."
Ein smiled then. Somehow it made him look less normal, stretching his mouth unnaturally, and the glow from the fire put a manic glint in his pale-as-snow eyes.
"You should go inside," she said. "Have some food and keep The Emerald Wind out of trouble."
"But you're not done."
"I'll do the rest alone. I have some words I would say without eavesdropping ears." It was true, for the most part. The people of Ipia believed in telling the dead a secret, something no other person in the world knew, so that the living and the dead would forever be bound to one another, no matter how many worlds they might be apart.
Ein stared at her for a while, before his gaze flicked just for a moment to the body wrapped in the sheet. "He's too far gone." With that he stood, stepped over the corpse he had been sitting on, and made his way into the inn. Cho shuddered, feeling a cold wind pass through her, and went back to digging, just a little more and she would be satisfied the hole was deep enough. Satisfied no one would ever dig up the Century Blade..
Zhihao poked his spoon at the bowl in front of him, scooped up something green and shovelled it into his mouth. He chewed slowly and without enthusiasm, then swallowed it down with a grimace. It tasted, he imagined, much like an old shoe that had once belonged to man who worked in the sewers. The problem was, the wine wasn't any better. He had never before drunk something that seemed to parch rather than quench.
He sat alone at a table as far from the door as possible, and everyone else in the inn watched him with that look people reserved for unwanted trash. The owner of the inn, a small man with sallow skin, stood at the door to the kitchen. Occasionally a child would appear, either from upstairs or from inside the kitchen, and the owner would shoo the brat away. If there was anything approaching a wife and mother here, Zhihao had seen no sign. There were only two other people in the inn, a man and woman who had the look of merchants. They wore long hooded cloaks, and hunched over their table, trying to keep an eye on Zhihao without meeting his eyes. Usually he loved just this sort of attention, but something was wrong. He found no joy in the discomfort of others, no joy in food, and no joy in wine. Luckily, Zhihao could still remember the sight of the Century Blade's lifeless body, and that certainly gave him a little joy. He could once again say that no living man had ever beaten him.
When the boy walked in he brought the stench of death with him, it wafted in through the open door and followed him all the way to Zhihao's table. He looked neither tired from a day's walking, nor sad or horrified by the things he had seen. It seemed fairly damning evidence that the boy wasn't quite right. But then he claimed to have had a sit down with a shinigami, and Zhihao doubted anyone walked away from that without being changed for the worse.
"I'm supposed to keep you from getting into trouble," the boy said as he plopped onto the chair opposite Zhihao and stared with those ghostly eyes.
"What trouble could I possibly get into?" Zhihao waved his spoon at the mostly empty room. The boy's stare didn't waver for a moment. "Just who's in charge anyway, you or her?"
"Does it matter?"
Zhihao sucked in a loud breath through his teeth and nodded as sagely as he could. "All groups, every group must have a leader. Someone in charge to make the hard decisions. Someone to point the way. Someone who sees the big picture, who knows the true goal."
The boy nodded slowly at Zhihao's words. It was all a little too easy when Zhihao put his mind to it, especially with one as young as the boy. Children were always so impressionable.
"Now I would have thought that you would be our little group's leader. You have the power, after all. You brought us back. You can set us free?"
"I can. But not until I have finished my quest. I need your help."
"Of course. Of course. So surely you should be in charge. Making the decisions. After all, it's your quest we're on."
Again the boy nodded, his gaze finally falling away to stare at the table. Zhihao breathed a sigh of relief at that. He wondered how much of a wedge he could drive between the boy and the woman. Enough, he hoped, that she might stop protecting him.
A thought occurred to Zhihao then. The woman was outside, tending to a decaying corpse as though it deserved some sort of respect. The boy, on the other hand was inside the inn, seated across from Zhihao. The other people in the inn couldn't stop him; even if they tried he could kill them with ease. So what was to stop him cutting the boy's throat right here, freeing them both from this ridiculous quest. It was a question he was still mulling over when the door opened and the woman entered.
She was carrying her looted blouse in one hand, and the Century Blade's sword in the other. Zhihao looked at her properly for the first time; she was pretty enough despite the filth and grime and dried blood. Certainly she was more muscled than he, but a bit of strength was never something to bemoan. With her under-wrappings around her chest he couldn't see much of what lay beneath, but his eyes were drawn to the stitched together wounds. Zhihao had watched her die. He'd seen his own men, those who served under him in Flaming Fist's warband, thrust hard steel into her. He knew where those wounds had come from, and how recently they had been made, and yet they looked almost old and healed over.