“I understand the truth of things,” she murmured. “I know what it means to exist.”
He smiled. “It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
She understood, then, that Jiang was very far from mad.
He might, in fact, be the sanest person she had ever met.
A thought occurred to her. “So what happens when we die?”
Jiang raised an eyebrow. “I think you can answer that.”
She mulled over this for a moment. “We go back to the world of spirit. We—we leave the illusion. We wake up.”
Jiang nodded. “We don’t
She opened her mouth to ask what he meant by that, but Jiang reached out and poked her in the forehead. “How do you feel?”
“Incredible,” she said. She felt more clearheaded than she had in months, as if all this time she’d been trying to peer through a fog and it had suddenly disappeared. She was ecstatic; she’d solved the puzzle, she knew the source of her power, and now all that remained was to learn to siphon it out at will. “So what now?”
“Now we’ve solved your problem,” said Jiang. “Now you know how you are connected to a greater web of cosmological forces. Sometimes martial artists who are particularly attuned to the world will find themselves overwhelmed by one of those forces. They suffer an imbalance—an affinity to one god over the others. This happened to you in the ring. But now you know where that flame came from, and when it happens to you again, you can journey to the Pantheon to find its balance. Now you’re cured.”
Rin jerked her head toward her master.
Cured?
Jiang looked pleased, relieved, and serene, but Rin only felt confused. She hadn’t studied Lore so that she could still the
flames. Yes, the fire had felt awful, but it had also felt powerful.
She wanted to learn to channel it, not to suppress it.
“Problem?” Jiang asked.
“I . . . I don’t . . .” She bit down on her lip before the words tumbled out of her mouth. Jiang was violently averse to any discussion of warfare; if she kept asking about military use, then he might drop her again the way he had before the Trials. He already thought she was too impulsive, too reckless and impatient; she knew how easily she might scare him off.
Never mind. If Jiang wasn’t going to teach her to call the power, then she’d figure it out for herself.
“So what’s the point of this?” she asked. “Just to feel good?”
“The point? What point? You’re enlightened. You have a better understanding of the cosmos than most theologians alive!” Jiang waved his hands around his head. “Do you have any idea what you can do with this knowledge? The Hinterlanders have been interpreting the future for years, reading the cracks in a tortoise shell to divine events to come. They can fix illnesses of the body by healing the spirit. They can speak to plants, cure diseases of the mind . . .”
Rin wondered why the Hinterlanders would achieve all of this and not militarize their abilities, but she held her tongue. “So how long will that take?”
“It makes no sense to speak of this in measurements of years,” said Jiang. “The Hinterlanders don’t allow interpretation of divinations until one has been training for at least five. Shamanic training is a process that lasts across your lifetime.”
She couldn’t accept that, though. She wanted power, and she wanted it now—especially if they were on the verge of a war with the Mugenese.
Jiang was watching her curiously.
“Anything else?” he asked after a while.
She thought of the Speerly Woman’s admonitions. She thought of the Phoenix, and of fire and pain.
“No,” she said. “Nothing else.”
Part II
Chapter 10
The
The only thing the
