Lindon straightened. “If all it takes is work, Elder Whisper, this one will not fail you.”
“Fate is not fair, but it is just. Hard work is never in vain…even when it does not achieve what you wished.” With those words, the five-tailed fox faded away, leaving only the real Elder Whisper enjoying his meal.
Though the elder had clearly dismissed him, Lindon had to show his respect before leaving. He bowed deeply three times to Elder Whisper’s back, taking the empty bucket from the elder’s last feeding and returning down the stairs.
The trip down was no easier on Lindon’s legs than the trip up, and his broken arm had begun to ache even through his mother’s script, but he spent the time in contemplation. The First Elder had spoken of Lindon’s situation as though he should give up and accept his fate, but Whisper had given him the opposite advice.
Lindon knew which he preferred. The First Elder would have him wait at home, safe and relatively content, but he would die having accomplished nothing. The fruit’s power tingled in his core, begging him to process it, urging him to take the first step on a Path of his own devising.
When he returned home, his family was gone. He sat cross-legged in the center of his house, focused entirely inward, cycling his madra with a greater intensity than ever before.
He felt as though he should make some breakthrough tonight, as though Elder Whisper’s words should trigger some understanding that would take him to a higher level and allow him to comprehend some deep truth. Or perhaps the spirit-fruit would show more of an effect than it had so far, allowing him to unexpectedly advance to Copper.
Nothing happened beyond the ordinary. The storm in his core subsided somewhat as he continued digesting the fruit’s pure madra, and his legs eased somewhat as they received fresh power after their exertion earlier. Even his broken arm felt better, though he could just as easily attribute that to the fresh pain-suppressing script his mother had left for him.
He quickly bathed and slept.
***
The mirrored door to Elder Whisper’s chamber swung shut, leaving the ancient fox staring at a reflection of himself. He tilted his muzzled back, snapping up a fish and letting it slide down his throat.
He had spent most of the past five decades in this room, where every day was much like another. Compared to the excitement of his younger days, this was a perfectly satisfying way to spend a few years.
But now the Unsouled had visited of his own volition. That was interesting.
He left the remainder of his meal, pacing circles around his chamber. In the mirror, his sleek white reflection followed him.
Whisper harvested both light and dreams into his core, blending them so that he could blind any eyes, stifle any ears. The humans understood light to some limited degree, but they had great difficulty with dreams. Whisper, however, had spent a hundred years meditating on the nature of dreams.
For the most part, a dream was nothing more than a mind deceiving itself. Only rarely did dreams tap into greater forces…but when they did, they could reveal pieces of fate.
Over the years, Elder Whisper had developed a sense for that fate. It was distant, imperfect, but he could dimly see the shapes of impending events.
“The Unsouled is connected,” his reflection said.
“He could be,” Whisper corrected himself.
The reflected snowfox whipped its five tails in irritation. “A drowning man will seize any branch, no matter how thin.”
For centuries, the shape looming in his dreams has been dark and impossibly vast. It would crush them all beneath its ponderous weight, and there was no stopping it. Sacred Valley’s past was coming back and bringing death with it. But there was something strange about his premonition this time.
Somehow, he felt as though the titanic threat were years distant and months close at the same time. One and then the other, like fate had yet to decide.
Now, he saw the familiar shape of fate’s touch on the Unsouled: the resolve in his eyes, the agony of a difficult decision in the set of his shoulders, the timing of his appearance in the tower. The boy’s future was in flux.
However it turned out, Whisper had done what he could. Now he would wait…and watch.
***
Every morning, the entire Wei clan turned out to meditate and cycle. The more distant families followed this tradition in their homes, but the core members of the clan all gathered together. It became the time where clan business was conducted, and a center for gossip and competition.
Ordinarily, Lindon arrived in the central courtyard outside the Hall of Elders to find fifty or sixty people already in conversation. The number would grow as the sun approached, and by daybreak the two hundred or so most honored members of the Wei clan would be united in cycling their madra. Even Lindon, an Unsouled, was no exception.
Today, the courtyard buzzed with excitement. Under the gray light before dawn, over two hundred people gathered in the courtyard of the Elder’s Hall, and none were meditating. News of Wei Mon Teris’ punishment had spread, and they were here to witness the penalty for cowardice.
Public punishments weren’t unheard of, but the most recent one was over a year past. They were always an occasion for the families of the Wei clan to snipe at one another, to witness a rival falling down a step on the endless ladder of position. The Patriarch hadn’t shown himself, but the First Elder stood atop the steps of the hall, his long eyebrows hanging down to his white beard.
Wei Mon Teris knelt before him, no ropes binding him. Honor would keep him in place. The rest of the Mon family stood behind him, his immediate family in the front, with aunts and uncles and cousins behind.
Teris’ father, Wei Mon Keth, stood like a mountain over his son. With his arms crossed, his face set, and a sword on his back, he looked like the statue of an ancient guardian.
As dawn broke, the First Elder addressed the crowd. “Yesterday, the young Copper Enforcer called Wei Mon Teris failed our clan. Faced with a Remnant on the slopes of Mount Yoma, he fled for his life, abandoning a child of the Foundation stage to danger. For this punishment, I will deliver three lashes from my own hand. Let this serve as a warning to cowards.” From his belt, the First Elder produced a thin stick of supple orus wood.
More than pain, these lashes were meant to deliver humiliation. The clan didn’t want to injure a sacred artist with a future, but they had to curb any potential embarrassments. A public lashing would show the Mon family as weak, and would undermine their position in the Wei clan.
If they fell low enough, eager relatives would seize their assets, leaving them weakened in truth. Weakness and the appearance of weakness were the same, and only strength had a place in Sacred Valley.
For his part, Lindon would take no pleasure in watching Teris beaten. He had never expected the Copper to defend him in the first place, and this whole process was a grim reminder of what could happen to him at any time. He was reliant on the honor and goodwill of others to protect him, and those were thin walls.
But if he could walk his own Path…then strength would be his defense.
As the First Elder raised his hand for the initial blow, Wei Mon Keth stepped forward. Teris’ father was also the head of the Mon family, and it was expected that he should defend his son. But the glance he sent toward the Shi family, toward Lindon, carried an impending threat.
“One moment, Elder,” Keth said, stepping in front of his son. “There is one matter we must resolve first.”